WND's Farah Just Can't Stop Pushing Obama Birtherism
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah continues his revisionist history of Obama birtherism in his Aug. 3 column," which came out to mark Barack Obama's "purported birthday":

Donald Trump was hardly the first "birther." Neither was I. Nor was my colleague Jerome Corsi. And neither was Hillary Clinton.

That honor belongs to one person and one person alone – Barack Obama.

We all followed suit, but were not the first to raise it.

Obama went to extreme lengths to conceal his past. And, indeed, if he was born in the U.S. and was eligible to serve as president, he certainly did his best to create the mystery that led to the question being asked.

Farah went on to claim that Obama "billed himself as having been born in Kenya," citing only a blurb by a former book agent; in fact, the agent who edited the blurb said it was a fact-check error, and there's no evidence Obama himself ever signed off on that description.

But, of course, Farah quickly moved to rehashing old conspiracy theories:

His fans in the media will look back on their hero with feelings of nostalgia. Watch for it. There may be "birther" recaps written about me. I, after all, published the bestselling book "Where's the Birth Certificate," by Corsi.

I won't go into the voluminous amount of evidence of a cover-up, or all the valid reasons for questioning not only where Obama was born, but whether he had even retained citizenship when he and his mother left the country to move to Indonesia and enroll him in a Muslim school there over the objections of U.S. immigration officials concerned, at the time, about his citizenship status.

I won't go into his missing college records, which might shed light on whether Obama had claimed to be a foreign student, as many at Columbia assumed.

I won't go into the fact that his supposed "birth hospital" in Hawaii steadfastly refused to acknowledge publicly that simple fact for years, inexplicably.

Would that not be reason enough to investigate his background? But there's more.

The governor of Hawaii at the time, Neil Abercrombie, searched for the birth certificate and said he could not find it.

None of which prove Obama wasn't born in the U.S., but instead prove that he has privacy rights. Still Farah went on:

Then Obama refused to release his long form birth certificate throughout his entire first term in office, despite the controversies he had ignited years earlier.

The question of eligibility was real. His father was a native of Kenya and his mother was an under-age 17-year-old who might not be have been able to confer citizenship to her son.

A birth certificate was eventually released for two reasons:

WND Books published "Where's the Birth Certificate?" by Jerome Corsi – and it went to No. 1 on Amazon. And, secondly, Obama's favorite fix-it law firm, Perkins Coie, was dispatch to Hawaii to finally "find" it, or so they say. Perkins Coie is the Democratic law firm that boasts "sharing" space with the FBI. Isn't that cozy?

I will add that the document has never been authenticated as genuine.

The "long form" birth certificate contained nothing that wasn't in the certificate Obama released. And it has been authenticated -- WND chose, rather than to accept it, concocted a false conspiracy theory that the PDF of the certificate that the Obama White House released was manufactured.Farah concluded:

Personally, I thought it was important to establish that Obama met the minimal constitutional litmus test for eligibility. For that I was vilified, called a racist, lampooned, besmirched, called a conspiracy theorist and worse.

It's worth recalling that in the 2008 election, the only "birther" issue to be raised by any media was the question of John McCain's eligibility. That one was driven home by the New York Times and had to be settled by a U.S. Senate investigation and unanimous vote that he was. McCain needed to turn over his birth certificate – because he was born in Panama. His parents were stationed there in the war. Obama never needed to show his birth certificate.

And that's the real story of who the first "birther" really was. It was Barack Hussein Obama.

But Farah lied to people to perpetuate his birtherism crusade in an attempt to destroy Obama. Instead, Farah destroyed any shred of credibiity WND had to push a false story. And even now -- as he has to beg for money to keep WND alive -- Farah can't stop lying.

MRC's Lord Defends OAN From Latest Platform Loss -- But Censors The Channel's Lies
Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center normally vociferously defends its fellow right-wing media outlets against any and allc riticism from non-right-wing quarters, it has mostly tepid about defending One America News. It didn't have much to say when DirecTV dropped OAN from its TV offerings beyond a couple posts and a column by Jeffrey Lord -- all of which ignored the fact that OAN has a notorious history of airing false and misleadoing claims, and that it's currently being sued by election-tech firms Dominion and Smartmatic for helping Donald Trumo's Big Lie by falsely accusing them of engaging in election fraud. When Verizon -- OAN's last remaining distributor -- decided to drop OAN, Lord returned with a July 23 column ranting that Verizon was "leftist" and "woke" for engaging in a business decision and somehow blaming it on the company encouraging diversity in its workforce:

Of course.

Verizon, now completely in the woke tank, has moved to silence the conservative One America News Network (OAN). Here’s a sample headline from CNET:

Verizon Becomes Last Big TV Provider to Drop Right-Wing Channel One America News

OAN was criticized for spouting misinformation about COVID and the 2020 election. But Verizon says it's dropping OAN for “economics.”

"Verizon says it's dropping OAN for ‘economics.’”

Right. If you believe that I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. This is, after all, the self-same Verizon that was headlined in The Blaze as follows not quite a year ago:

Verizon pushes leftist, anti-American agenda in social justice training for employees: Report

Breitbart has exactly captured what this is really all about.

[...]

Make no mistake. This shutdown of One America News by Verizon is part and parcel of the American Left’s determination to use Big Tech to shut down not just conservative media but conservatives in general - and there is nothing new about it. ( AT&T’s Direct TV has also dropped OAN.)

That passing reference to "misinformation" at OAN is Lord's only reference to the elephant in the room. He went on to rant about "CNN pushing the Trump-Russia collusion hoax," which wasn't a hoax at all, and did not entail pushing the kind of lies OAN spread about Dominion and Smartmatic. He apparently doesn't believe that OAN should face any real-life consequences for spreading lies.

CNS Unemployment Coverage Distortion Watch, Headline Shenanigans Edition
Topic: CNSNews.com

Susan Jones' main CNSNews.com story on July's employment numbers started out this way:

Non-farm payrolls added a whopping 528,000 in July, more than double the estimate of 250,000; and the unemployment rate edged down to 3.5 percent in July from 3.6 percent in June.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that job growth was widespread, led by gains in leisure and hospitality, professional and business services, and health care. "Both total nonfarm employment and the unemployment rate have returned to their February 2020 pre-pandemic levels," BLS noted.

You wouldn't know any of that from the headline of the story, however,. which cherry-picked all the less positive numbers and crammed them in:"62.1%: Labor Force Participation Falls in July, As 239,000 More Americans Drop Out of Labor Force." Jones didn't mention any of that stuff until the thhird paragraph:

But on the downside, the number of Americans not in the labor force -- no job and not looking for one -- climbed above the 100,000,000 mark again, settling at 100,051,000 in July. That's a 239,000 increase from June; and it follows an increase of 510,000 from May to June, when the number rose to 99,812,000.

The “not in the labor force” category includes retired persons, students, those taking care of children or other family members, and others who are neither working nor seeking work.

People who don't have a job and aren't looking for one put downward pressure on the important labor force participation rate, which dropped a tenth of a point to 62.1 percent in July.

One might call the headline on Jones' story false advertising. And even after conceding that the job numbers hit pre-pandemic levels, Jones still searched for a way to credit Ddonald Trump for having an even better economy pre-pandemic:

The participation rate was 61.4 percent when Joe Biden took office as the pandemic raged. Today's number, 62.1 percent, is still below the Trump-era high of 63.4 percent in February 2020, just before COVID shut things down.

After rising for more than three decades, the overall labor force participation rate peaked in early 2000 at 67.3 percent and subsequently trended down. In recent years, baby-boom retirements have contributed to the decline in the overall participation rate.

Instead of hisusual sidebar on government jobs, editor Terry Jeffrey wrote one on manufacturing jobs, admitting that they "increased by 30,000 in the month of July" and is "is now above what it was in the months immediately preceding that start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020." It must have painful for the Trump-loving Jeffrey to admit that.

MRC Continues To Hypocritically Whine About Dems Meddling In GOP Primaries
Topic: Media Research Center

We've shown how the Media Research Center has hyporitically complained about Democrats taking part in Republican primaries to boost far-right candidates who might be easier to beat in November -- though it had hearily endorsed Rush Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos," an effort in which Republicans meddled in Democratic primaries. The MRC's whining on the subject has, unsurprisingly, continued. Kevin Tober hyped in a July 24 post:

On Sunday’s State of the Union on CNN, panelist Scott Jennings wiped the floor with the leftists he was debating during the panel segment of the show. Once the direction of the panel drifted toward how in many Republican primaries, voters have nominated what some claim are weak or radical candidates, Jennings turned it around on them and noted how the Democrat Party [sic] has been propping up these candidates. 

“Let me just say. We’ve heard a lot of names here this morning. Cox, you brought up the Maryland guy, Lake, Arizona, Mastriano, Pennsylvania. What do all these people have in common?” Jennings asked rhetorically. “Trump is for them and the Democrat [sic] Governors Association has spent millions of dollars to get them their nominations. It is the height of cynicism and hypocrisy!”

Tim Graham, who did most of the earlier selective ranting about cross-party meddling, did more of it in a July 26 post:

On Monday night, Rachel Maddow fulsomely interviewed Josh Shapiro, the Democrat nominee in the governor's race in Pennsylvania, about how his opponent Doug Mastriano is a dangerous, anti-democratic extremist, and never asked Shapiro why -- if he was such a danger -- Shapiro spent almost a million dollars trying to help him win the Republican nomination.

Shapiro spent $840,000 running ads calling Mastriano “one of Donald Trump’s strongest supporters.” The ad went on to say that Mr. Mastriano “wants to end vote by mail. He led the fight to audit the 2020 election. If Mastriano wins, it’s a win for what Donald Trump stands for.” Shapiro and the state Democratic Party sent out mailers boosting him.

It's cynical, but MSNBC doesn't think it's worth mentioning. This, obviously, is the same tactic the Democrats attempted with Trump in 2016, only to see it backfire in their faces. But Maddow will play the game of pretending they had nothing to do with this!

[...]

Shapiro ran an "Operation Chaos" in the race, spending money to make it possible that the "dangerous chaos" candidate won. And MSNBC is presenting this Fake News impression that he never wanted this to happen.

Graham didn't explain that "Operation Chaos" started with right-wing icon Limbaugh -- and that his employer loved it.

Tober returned for a July 31 post touting talking heads on ABC criticizing the idea:

On Sunday’s This Week on ABC, both co-moderator Jonathan Karl and his panelists on the “PowerHouse Roundtable” tore into the Democrat Party congressional campaign arm: the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) for running ads promoting Trump-backed candidates in GOP primaries. One panelist, USA Today Washington Bureau chief Susan Page declared it both “risky” and “hypocritical."  

Switching gears from an unrelated subject, Karl turned to the topic of the Democrats' election meddling. He remarked: “Speaking of this question of credibility, I wanna Susan, get you to kinda help explain Democrats going in and putting millions of dollars in states, in races across the country to support candidates” that are like former President Donald Trump. 

Turning to Page, Karl bemoaned how even liberal Never-Trump Republican Peter Meijer, who was one of the ten Republicans to vote for Trump’s second impeachment is being targeted by the DCCC.

In neither post did Tober mention the hypocrisy of being Republicans being outraged overthis when they cheered Rush's 'Operation Chaos."

Mark Finkelstein whined in an Aug. 7 post:

How all-in has Michael Steele gone for the Democrats? As his comments on Ali Velshi’s MSNBC show on Saturday demonstrated, the answer is, very all-in! Steele is the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, turned Never Trumper, MSNBC analyst, and eventually, member of the disgraced Lincoln Project.

The subject was the efforts by Democrats to meddle in Republican primaries by promoting MAGA/Trump-supporters, whom the Dems assume would be easier to defeat in the general election with the latest example being Michigan's third congressional district with Democrats pumping money in to promote John Gibbs, an ardent Trump supporter over incumbent Congressman Peter Meijer, who had voted to impeach the President in 2021.

[...]

Not only did Steele support the Democrats' intervention in the Republican primary, but he was also less-than-truthful in describing their efforts. Steele twice claimed that the Democrats had run “positive” ads for Gibbs.

Finkelstein also refused to mention "Operation Chaos."

Newsmax's Hirsen Gushes Over Country Singer's Right-Wing Rant In Song Form
Topic: Newsmax

Newsmax columnist James Hirsen loves movies and music that push right-wing narratives. He describes his latest love in his July 25 column:

John Rich has tapped into the current Zeitgeist like few others dare to even try, and it seems to be paying off big-time for the country music artist.

His latest inspiration is turning out to be an anthem for the times, one that since its release has been downloaded by millions all around the globe.

The singer-songwriter’s most recent project is titled “Progress,” and he appears to draw upon his extensive band experience, which includes being a member of Lonestar and Big & Rich.

Written, performed, and recorded by Rich, “Progress” shot to the top of the charts in what feels like a nanosecond. 

The tune was initially released independently via former President Donald Trump’s social media network Truth Social. Then on its first day it became the global No. 1 single on the Apple Music charts, outperforming some of the biggest pop artists.

The song's extraordinary rise in popularity is an indication of the sizable population of freedom-loving people in the U.S. and the world, whose entertainment choices are a reflection of their deeply held beliefs.

Indeed, the song is very Trumpy, as Hirsen goes on to gush:

The lyrics of the song go on to take direct aim at specific policies that are impacting our nation and others abroad, including border crises, financial mismanagement, abandonment of individuals, facilities, and resources in Afghanistan, and draconian measures in response to a virus.>

The first verse begins with words that express the feelings of people who are justifiably overwhelmed with the many unprecedented changes that have occurred in the past two years:

“There’s a hole in this country
Where its heart used to be.”

In one verse, Rich's song compares the current administration's zero-border policy with its ruinous withdrawal from Afghanistan that led to the deaths of 13 military service members:

“They invite the whole world to come live in our land
And leave our countrymen dying in Afghanistan.”

In another verse, the lyrics provide a commentary on the current tendency to denigrate and even try to eliminate Christianity in order to replace it with allegiance to the almighty state:

“They say let go of Jesus and let Government save
You can have back your freedoms if you do what we say.”

The subject of faith is near and dear to Rich, who posed the following question back in 2020: “Why is there such a push to get God out of the conversation?”

Hirsen's gushing continued:

Rich issued a press statement to explain his goals in releasing the song at this particular point in time.

“I, like you, have been watching and living through the systematic destruction of our country. And in the name of progress, we see our border is standing wide open,” he said.

“And in the name of their progress we see our children targeted. And in the name of progress we see crime coast to coast like we’ve never seen it before. And in the name of progress we see people wanting to take our rights away to defend ourselves and our families as we see fit. And so on and so forth in the name of progress,” he added.

Rich sounds like he's been watching Fox News and reading Newsmax. Tbhe fact that Rich chose Donald Trump's fringe social media site to launch the song tells us he's not trying to push a universal message -- he doesn't explain why doing what was necessary to save lives during a deadly pandemic was a bad thing -- but a very narrow one. Indeed, it;s a =right-winbg screed, and Hirsen loves it, even slobbering over the video for the song:

The music video of the song projects powerful images of the nation's so-called progress, including empty grocery store shelves, exorbitant gas prices, and streets on fire as the result of intentional burning and looting gone unchecked.

Is there any footage of the Capitol insurrection, which right-wingers like Hirsen and Rich presumably want to keep unchecked? Did the video include mention of the "so-called progress" of Donald Trump's rampant corruption and lies? Hirsen doesn't say.

WND's Lively Launches Sleazy Attack On Harris
Topic: WorldNetDaily

When WorldNetDaily columnist Scott Lively is not fluffing Vladimir Putin or spewing hate at LGBT people, he has the occasional meltdown about Democratic politicians. LIke this sleazy July 25 attack on Vice President Kamala Harris:

The American experience has become a horror story that's about to get truly scary. The most blatantly sexually corrupt – and publicly reviled – woman in American political history remains just one heartbeat away from the presidency of the United States as the Obama team waits for the exact right moment to pull the plug on putative "President" Biden.

What started in 1620 as the dream of America as a "Shining City on a Hill" has morphed into the nightmare of "The Shining" with crazy Joe Biden as the ax murderer of cultural normalcy, Jack, and Kamala Harris as the hapless wife, Wendy (set to inherit the dystopian ruins he leaves behind). But Harris' story goes much deeper than Hollywood – to the apocalyptic Babylonian script of Revelation 17, which America now emulates, in which she IS the "Horror," if not (technically) the "Whore" of Babylon.

Lively did not explain how Harris is supposedly "blatantly sexually corrupt" -- he's likely alluding to the old debunked right-wing slut-shaming that Harris advanced her political career through an affair with California politician Willie Brown. Fellow WND columnist Mychal Massie advanced the smear, and even the reasonable-by-comparison Media Research Center tried to as well.

From there, Lively spouted a bunch of bizarre conspiracy-mongering about Barack Obama, which somehow culminated with Harris:

That old serpent Barack promised to fundamentally transform America – and man, has he delivered. In his eight years in the White House, he mysteriously transformed this once-Christian nation into a demon-infested Babylon, and then, from his shadow-government war rooms in downtown D.C., he first orchestrated the 2020 election coup and has ever since played the part of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen to Biden's evil "Chucky" revision of the lovable Charlie McCarthy doll (a wooden puppet controlled by an arm up his backside), as Obama's minions feverishly consolidated their control over all our institutions under the cover of a continuing medical pandemic and a "domestic insurrection of white supremacists."

Obama's next major milestone and the ultimate humiliation of the "white America" he so fervidly reviles will be the ascension of the utterly inept and embarrassingly gauche Kamala Harris to the highest office in the land, at the very height of our worst national crisis ever.

After quasi-clarifying that "In the Bible, the 'Whore of Babylon' is not a woman but a city," Lively ranted even more about Harris and Harris-adjacent things:

What is not speculative, is the seeming inescapable, horrifying specter of our country falling into the incapable hands of Kamala Harris as the world collapses into lawlessness and chaos.

"Who can save us from this nightmare?" is the natural question we're all intended to ask at this stage – because it has all been staged to bring us to this very spot, where fear and anxiety make us ready to accept whatever "savior" the dark principalities and powers plan soon to unveil. The Whore of Babylon is just a supporting role in this real-life horror movie, while the Luciferian "Star" waits in the wings. Somehow, some way, I suspect it will be Obama.

However, no matter what human form that false Messiah will take, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." Choose you this day whom YOU will serve.

Lively has shown by his unhinged hate who he serves.

NEW ARTICLE: The MRC's Gun Defenders
Topic: Media Research Center
After each major gun massacre earlier this year, the Media Research Center devoted time and energy to defending the honor of guns and the refusal of Republicans to do anything meaningful to address gun crime. Read more >>

MRC In Defense Mode Over GOP Flip-Flop On Veterans Bill
Topic: Media Research Center

When Senate Republicans blocked a bill that would expand benefits for veterans would had been exposed to toxic environments while serving -- purportedly over a dispute over a funding mechanism despite having previously supporting the bill on a previous vote, though it may have been more beause the Republicans were throwing a fit that Democrats reached an agreement with Sen. Joe Manchin on a completely different bill -- the Media Research Center had to rush into defense mode, especially after former "Daily Show" host and longtime veterans advocate Jon Stewart excoriated the Republicans for the flip-flop. Alex Christy spent an Aug. 2 post complaining that Stephen Colbert called out the flip-flop and insisting Republicans had a perfectly good reason for doing so:

On Monday’s installment of The Late Show on CBS, host Stephen Colbert flipped off Republicans for voting against the PACT Act, alleging they oppose health care for veterans solely to get back at Democrats for Chuck Schumer and Joe Manchin coming to a climate agreement. Naturally, Colbert omitted other, less malicious explanations.

Colbert began by solemnly declaring, “there's a story about Congress and veterans out there that you might have heard of. I’m just gonna start by saying I've been making the political jokey make-'em-ups for over 20 years, and I've never seen anything so baldly cynical and pointlessly malicious as this.”

After explaining the bill's coverage of health care for those "who were exposed toxins and burn pits," Colbert reported, “Except that, due to an administrative issue, the Senate had to revote on the bill. And this time, it was blocked, because 25 Republican senators flipped their votes.”

As he continued, Colbert raised a middle finger, “And like many Americans, I'd like to flip them in return. And, why would Republicans screw over veterans on a good bill that they previously voted for? Well, one theory is they had their boxers in a bunch after Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer secretly negotiated a big climate deal.”

That’s one theory. Another, more innocent explanation is that the bill was written is such a way that it was possible the money could’ve been spent on unrelated matters and Republicans realized that and wanted to fix it.

Christy didn't explain why Republicans failed to catch this before voting on it the first time -- possibly because he ewould have to explain that GOP senators were incompetent at their jobs.

Kevin Tober took his own shot at being the GOP apologist in a post later that day:

On Tuesday night, after a week of arguing between Senate Republicans and Democrats over legislation which would help veterans who have been made sick by burn pits, both CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News omitted the reason why Republicans opposed the legislation. Hint: it’s not because they hate veterans.

After blocking the legislation late last week, both CBS and NBC were quick to pounce on Republicans for turning around and voting for the legislation on Tuesday evening. 

If you made the misguided decision to rely on either CBS or NBC for your news, you would never know that Senate Democrats stuffed the bill with over $396 billion in mandatory spending.

[...]

It turns out that if you stuff a bill related to care for veterans with Democrat Party [sic] pet projects, Republicans will fight to cut that waste out. It has nothing to do with not supporting veteran care. CBS & NBC know that but the truth doesn’t matter. Only the Democrat Party [sic] narrative does. 

Like Christy, Tober didn't explain why Republicans were so incompetent as to overlook that spending  on the first vote, nor did he e3xplain why it's a bad thing for making that spending mandatory rather than discretionary, or explain why it's a bad thing for spending on veterans to be mandatory rather than discretionary or explain what exactly the "Democrat Party [sic] pet projects" Republicans are oppsing (or why he can't get the name of the Democratic Party correct).

Margaret Buckley used an Aug. 3 post to gripe that MSNBC's Joe Scarborough "ranted his anger over the Republicans shooting down a bill that could potentially help Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, labeling them as 'anti-veteran'" and that guest Sen. Tim Kaine was "droning on and on about his theory as to why these 'dirty' Republicans struck the bill down. He figured it was because they were “mad the Democrats were doing a reconciliation deal,' and wanted 'revenge.'" Surprisingly, Buckley didn't try to defend Republicans.

Emma Schulz's Aug. 3 post was devoted to whining that CNN interviewed "liberal activist" Stewart (Schutz didn't explain how Stewart's activism on this issue made him "liberal") and that that the host accurately pointed out that Republicans looked quite "anti-veteran" in flip-flopping on the bill before finally being shamed into supporting it:

What's the worst, most simplistic way to attack Senate Republicans? If you're a journalist at CNN, you suggest GOP members are “anti-veteran.” Discussing the new toxic exposure bipartisan bill traveling through the House and the Senate, on Tuesday’s CNN Newsroom with Ana Cabrera, the host interviewed liberal activist Jon Stewart. This new bill, according to Roll Call, expands on the existing House bill passed in March. The legislation would consist of “new health care and tax-free benefits as high as $3,332 a month to as many as 3.5 million veterans” at a cost estimated to be $278.5 billion over 10 years.

Originally, Republicans had backed the bill. When voting on it on June 16th, it was 84-14 in favor. Now, as Stewart claimed, Senate Republicans are “Flipping. Flipping their votes,” because of a “so-called budgetary gimmick.” The measure failed 55-42 last week.

Assuming the worst, Cabrera asked, “Why would they change their votes? Do you actually think they’re anti-veteran?” “No, I think they’re insulated and isolated, and that they’ve lost themselves to parliamentary procedures,” Stewart answered. He continued, “and you know, I’m not suggesting that there’s malevolence in the way that they’re treating veterans, but there is apathy and ignorance.”

The total spending would be more than $300 million over the upcoming decade, and in the words of Republican Senator Pat Toomey, “what I’m trying to do is change a government accounting methodology that is designed to allow our Democratic colleagues to go on an unrelated $400 billion spending spree that has nothing to do with veterans.”

What would it have looked like if this had been a bipartisan bill that Democrats had tried to stomp? The networks might surely be calling them, “smart” or “intelligent” for checking where millions of dollars were planned to go.

Yet, Cabrera stands to suggest that GOP might be against the men and women of service, probing the activist to do the same. Cabrera even went as going as far as to suggest that personal Twitter battles between Senator Ted Cruz and Stewart made the ‘No’ from the Senator a little more personal.

Schultz huffed at the end: "What CNN has failed to report is that POLITICO reported Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stating, “it will pass this week,” along with both Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) and Senator John Thune (R- S.D.) making comments on the same wavelength, how they would “expect it to pass.” Instead, Cabrera would rather paint the narrative that CNN so boldly holds: GOP stands for nothing good." Meanwhile, the MRC is too busy playing defense to acknowledge that Republicans would not be in this situation had they been more honest and not played last-minute budget games on this bill.

Correction: WND Did Report Dropping Of Charges Against Colbert Staffers
Topic: WorldNetDaily

A correction: We had previously written that WorldNetDaily hyped the arrest of "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" staffers inside the Capitol complex but censored the charges being dropped later. Turns out WND did -- but that story was, for some reason, buried in thte search results on WND, which for some reason does not list stories chronologically. Bob Unruh reported the exoneration in a July 19 article -- but still managed to whine that Capitol riot insurrectionists are still in jail for actual crimes:

Hundreds of Americans have been accused of illegally invading the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as part of a protest over the known irregularities of the 2020 presidential election, and hundreds now are facing charges. Many of them still are in jail.

But authorities in Washington say staff members for a television show who were found to be in the Capitol complex without permission, and were accused of "unlawful entry," will face no punishment.

The New York Daily News reported that nine staff members for "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" – facing accusations of "unlawful entry" – will not be charged.

The staff members had been arrested last month but now are being given a pass on their offense, according to officials with the Capitol Police and the U.S. attorney's office in Washington.

Unruh did go on to grudginging admit that the show staffers were "being given a pass" because they did nothing wrong -- they were properly let into the building but did not have a staff escort with them at all times, as is apparently required. but after doing that, Unruh returned to complaining about the insurrectionists who committed actual, documented crimes remaining in jail and hyping a letter written by outraged Republicans on the subject:

WND reported when the situation caught the attention of Republican members of Congress, who have insisted on being given all the reports, witness statements, surveillance footage and photographs regarding the incursion.

"These individuals were arrested and charged with unlawful entry after causing 'disturbances' at the offices of several Republican members, including 'banging' on their office doors," a letter to Capitol Police from Reps. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Rodney Davis, R-Ill., said.

[...]

"Much has been made lately about unauthorized access to House office buildings, including debunked Democrat allegations that Republican members led so-called reconnaissance tours of the Capitol Complex in advance of January 6," the letter said.

"Unlike the Democrat allegations of reconnaissance tours, however, the events on June 16 actually resulted in arrests for unlawful entry," the Republicans wrote.

Yes, Unruh still found a way to push WND's right-wing agenda even when the original story turned out to be a nothingburger.

Dick Morris Continues Sucking Up To Trump To Promote His Book
Topic: Newsmax

Dick Morris has been in full Trump suck-up mode all over Newsmax to promote his new (Newsmax-published) pro-Trump books. Let's see how that's been going for him since the last time we checked, shall we? In a July 25 Newsmax TV appearance, Morris touted Trump's plan to destroy the federal civil service system:

If former President Donald Trump is reelected in 2024, there are reports he is going to work to drain the swamp of "deep state"career government officials by permitting the president to staff his government as one sees fit.

While Trump campaign adviser Dick Morris, who has released his latest book "The Return: Trump's Big 2024 Comeback," did not fully acknowledge the reported "Schedule F" executive order to Newsmax, he hailed it as noble reform for the Executive branch.

That's a bit of historical tension in American politics," Morris told Monday's "Rob Schmitt Tonight." "All officials used to be appointed. Andrew Jackson set that precedent. He said, 'They elected me president, so I should fill the administration with people who will do my policies.'

"And then when that system became too corrupt, they replaced it in 1882 with the civil service system. But the problem is now the civil service marches to its own drummer."

[...]

"And I think that this rule that he's seeking to propose is a very good one, because it makes the bureaucracy politically responsible to the president."

In nreality, turning the whole of federal government into a patronage system beholden to the president and not making the government function properly is a bad idea that will quickly descend into corruption and effectively destroy government function.

It was also noted that "Morris also noted in his appearance with Schmitt, as he wrote in his book, he has found strength in God and purpose after battling cancer." No mention of the prostitute-patronizing that cost Morris his adviser gig with President Clinton in 1996 and set him on a revenge path that led him to being the aforementioned Trump suck-up.

Morris repeated his low-stakes prediction (and his book's premise) that Trump will run for president again in 2024 in a July 27 TV appearance, dutifully mixing in another Newsmax agenda item:

Meanwhile, Morris said he was "shocked" that Trump's speech didn't get any play on Fox News, even though the former president gave this "wonderful speech laying out his programming beautifully, not much about 2020 all about the future, right?

"It took two hours and Fox News did not cover it. They covered Mike Pence's speech to the same group. But Fox did not cover it … this blackout by Fox News and by the arms of the Democratic Party of Donald Trump is reaching horrific proportions."

Morris diverged from his pro-Trump agenda in a July 30 appearance, declaring that "Ukraine is winning the war against Russia and will be 'potentially winning decisively'"-- a worrisome statement for those on the Ukraine side, given Morris' history of notoriously bad political prognostication. He returned to the Trump beat for an Aug. 1 TV hit that again took a shot at the competition:

Former presidential adviser Dick Morris told Newsmax on Monday that Fox News is doing everything it can to create a GOP primary fight opposing Donald Trump — from ignoring the former president to promoting a candidacy for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Morris, who outlines the strategy in his newly released book, "The Return: Trump's Big 2024 Comeback," said it's part of a larger strategy by the Democrats to sully Trump and change Fox News from conservative-leaning to liberal-oriented.

"They've censored, they switched Fox News from Republican to Democrat, and they are now basically … Newsmax is the only organ that's covering Trump," Morris said on "John Bachman Now."

"And in the meantime, Fox is doing everything it can to promote DeSantis. He's on the air all the time. They say nice things about him. Trump hasn't been on for three-and-a-half months, and this is because the … Democrats are scared to death of Trump, and they know they have to try to beat him in the primary."

Morris cheered Trump's takeover of the Republican Party in an Aug. 6 TV appearance:

Former President Donald Trump has "orchestrated a makeover" of the Republican Party before his return in 2024, bringing the "fire" for midterm election turnout that is sorely needed, according to presidential adviser Dick Morris on Newsmax.

"In 2016, Trump orchestrated a takeover of the Republican Party," Morris told "Saturday Report." "Now, he's orchestrating a makeover of the Republican Party. It's unprecedented.

"It's never happened before. The former incumbent president really is reshaping the Republican Party and making it into a MAGA, America First institution."

[...]

Trump can stake his claim to returning America to a world powerhouse with a widely successful economy, something no Democrat or Republican can stake claim to, Morris concluded.

"He's a builder," Morris said. "And imagine somebody who built the most beautiful building in the world, and then the successor came in and tore it all down

"He's going to want, as a craftsman, to rebuild that, to bring the country back to where it was at the end of his presidency. He's immensely proud of that, and he's determined to restore that."

Ther article concluded with a corporate plea to get on a text list for Newsmax readers: "Get latest news on Trump's 2024 plans, his "Big Announcement" and more from Newsmax's Trump list!" As if we needed another reminder that Morris and Newsmax remain beholden to Trump.

CNS' Donohue Spews Homophobic Hate Over Monkeypox
Topic: CNSNews.com

With monkeypox infections on the rise, notoriously homophobic CNSNews.com columnist Bill Donohue knew who to heap scorn on. He ranted in a July 20 column:

"Monkeypox can be exceptionally painful," says Patrick Ashley, senior deputy director at the D.C. Department of Health, "especially if there are lesions on the penis, a lot of penal swelling, on the anus as well, it can be significantly painful."

Now we all know who is the most likely to have these kinds of problems. They used to be called homosexuals, then they were called gay. Now they are often known as men having sex with men (as if this is not what defines homosexual behavior).

The D.C. Department of Health confirms our suspicion. So who is listed on its website as the most likely to get monkeypox? "Gay, bisexual, and other men 18 and older who have sex with men and have had multiple or anonymous sexual partners in the last 14 days; or transgender women [e.g. males who think they are a woman] and nonbinary persons assigned male at birth who have sex with men; or sex workers [prostitutes] of any sex; or staff (of any sex) at establishments where sexual activity occurs (e.g., bathhouses, saunas, sex clubs)."

In other words, promiscuous gay men are the problem.

This is not a generalization. While all health officials and gay activists will insist that everyone is at risk, they know full well that this is a gay-driven disease.

Donohue then smeared gay men as caring only about sex and not health:

You may as well talk to the wall. Gays who practice dangerous sexual acts, and who have multiple sex partners—with men they never met before—are impervious to reason. They will stop at nothing. For them, the pain and suffering that they endure is worth the risk. That they may spread their disease to innocent unsuspecting persons seems not to matter.

After AIDS was discovered in 1981, those who demanded that the bathhouses remain open—even though they were a popular venue for the spread of HIV—were not gay bashers. They were gay activists.

By this time, Donohue had become obsessed with using monkeypox as an excuse to spew hate at LGBT people. He huffed in an Aug. 1 column:

There are two segments of society most responsible for the spread of monkeypox: promiscuous homosexuals and elites in medicine.

If homosexuals acted more responsibly and stopped engaging in lethal sex practices, stopped having multiple partners, and stopped having sex with anonymous men, monkeypox would not be the problem that it is today.

If the elites in medicine—including those at the CDC and the World Health Organization (WHO)—were straight shooters and told it like it is, monkeypox would not be the problem that it is today. It does not help when the best that the head of WHO can say to homosexuals is that they need to reduce the number of their sexual partners "for the moment."

Donohue even worked another right-wing bogeyman into his rant: "A man who works for George Soros also opened up about his behavior during New York's Pride events. He said he 'had sex with several guys over the weekend.' He got monkeypox."

Donobhue ramped up the homophobia in an Aug. 5 column:

Imagine if those who drink too much alcohol and wind up damaging their liver were to band together demanding a cure for their malady, without first pledging to change their behavior. What would we say? What would we say to heavy smokers if they demanded a cure for lung cancer without first pledging to change their behavior?

Yet when it comes to homosexuals and monkeypox, or AIDS before that, gay leaders demand that we find a cure for their disease without first pledging to change their behavior.

When Covid hit, we locked down the economy, closed schools, and banned church services. So why didn't health officials cancel the "Pride" events in New York City at the end of June? A predictable surge in monkeypox followed.

Why didn't health officials ban the Dore Alley gay festival at the end of July in San Francisco? Those who attended this event said there were no warnings posted anywhere.

[...]

We need to send Catholic moral theologians and doctors into the gay community to advise them of the merits of Catholic sexual ethics. Agreeing to temporarily keep one's pants on in public is not a strategy that works.

Donohue seems to be offering himself up as a "Catholic moral theologian," but he violates morality by having too much hate in his hear tfor people different from him.

MRC Invents 'Secondhand Censorship' To Push Bogus Anti-Social Media Narrative
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's campaign to frame private companies enforcing their terms of service on its users as a diabolical campaign to "censor" right-wingers who should be allowed to spread lies and misinformation unfettered has always been dishonest, but it has found a way to expand on that dishonesty, announced in a July 20 post by Brian Bradley and Gabriela Pariseau:

America is increasingly outraged by the manner in which radical Big Tech leftists are censoring conservative and Christian leaders and organizations on nearly every major social media platform.

But what is the secondhand effect of this censorship on consumers – the American people? How much information is being kept from the average social media user? 

The answer is an astonishing amount, arguably more information than has ever been purposely withheld from the public in American history.

The Media Research Center's CensorTrack.org has identified and verified over 4,000 individual examples of censorship. For purposes of this study, we looked at only the first quarter of 2022 wherein 172 cases were identified. An analysis of the audiences of those individuals/organizations alone found that in that three-month period, there were no less than 144,301,713 times information was withheld from the American people.

This phenomenon is best thought of as “secondhand censorship.” Secondhand censorship is defined as the number of times that users on social media had information kept from them.

This, of course, is a bogus and meaningless metric. It simply takes an instance of purported "censorship" and multiplies that by the number of followers that person or organization has:

The MRC looked at seven platforms – Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Spotify – to calculate secondhand censorship’s impact. 

MRC measured the effects of secondhand censorship by adding the number of followers each account had at the time of each censorship case recorded during the quarter.

[...]

MRC identified 172 individual cases of direct censorship logged in MRC Free Speech America’s CensorTrack database during the first quarter of 2022. CensorTrack has now logged a total of over 4,000 total cases of Big Tech’s direct censorship.

But when Big Tech companies censor an account or its posts, every one of the censored account’s followers are unable to see the perspectives of the targeted account, or the account’s posts are obscured such that they’re suppressed and more difficult to view. The consequences of this “secondhand censorship” are broad authoritarianism, mass thought-control and a restricted marketplace of ideas.

The MRC muddies things further by classifying things that were not actually censored as actual "censorship," insisting that content filters that one must click through to access content is "censorship" even though the content itself is not "censored." There's other dishonesty too, as described in this section:

YouTube placed two content filters on a Fox News video of former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) and Fox News host Laura Ingraham about the Ukraine War, as noted in a March 9 CensorTrack entry.

Gabbard said on The Ingraham Angle that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was reportedly open to engaging in negotiations to compromise with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war. 

YouTube used content filters to chide Fox News subscribers, suggesting that the video “may be inappropriate,” and that the YouTube “community” had identified the video as “inappropriate or offensive.” 

Secondhand censorship translated to Fox News’s 9,180,000 YouTube subscribers being prohibited from viewing potentially pivotal news The incident contributed to thwarting a consensus on a viable path out of the war from forming.

But Bradley and Pariseau offer no evidence that Gabbard's claim about alleged "compromise" was the reason YouTube put a content filter over the video (which merely requires a single click to access, no sane person's definition of "censorship"). It might have more to do with Gabbard -- a supporter of Russia and Vladimir Putin -- baselessly blaming the "military-industrial complex" and Hillary Clinton for the Russia-Ukraine war (even though Russia is the one that invaded Ukraine) and even more baselessly accusing U.S. leaders of lying to the American people about the situation there. Ingraham did not allow anyone to rebut Gabbard's views, and Ingraham heartily endorsed them.

Bradley and Pariseau was upset that Joe Rogan couldn't be as racist as he wants to be, going to Bette Midler whataboutism route to do so:

Most race-related secondhand censorship during the first quarter came when Spotify removed approximately 70 episodes of Rogan’s podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience” in February. When the streaming platform removed those episodes, the effects of secondhand censorship cascaded across Rogan’s reported 11 million per-episode Spotify listeners.

Rogan’s past use of the N-word over the roughly 10-year course of his podcast reportedly ignited a furor across Spotify’s workforce. The comments even reportedly prodded Spotify CEO Daniel Ek into writing a memo to employees saying that the “hurtful” comments “do not represent the values of this company,” according to Axios.

Just after a video collage of Rogan’s use of the N-word came out, MRC found that leftist PatriotTakes, the group behind the video’s release, partnered with leftist SuperPAC MeidasTouch. MeidasTouch was partly funded by actress Bette Midler, who has a history of unhinged political behavior. She demonstrated this in a May 24 tweet that read, in part: “DON'T SAVE FETUSES ONLY TO HAVE THEM DIE AT SCHOOL BECAUSE YOU LOVE YOUR GUNS MORE THAN LIFE!  FOR SHAME!!” This wasn’t censored, of course.

If you're defending offensive racism, you're losing. If you're invoking Bette Midler -- who is not racist -- to further defend that rasism, you're losing even more. further, the duo are falsely blaming Spotify for the removal of the Rogan episodes using the N-word; actually, Rogan himself requested that they be removed, so Bradley should really be blaming Rogan himself for "censorship."

Bradley and Pariseau also defended COVID vaccine misinformation and conspiracy theories:

Big Tech censorship of alternate viewpoints on COVID-19 and vaccinations raged ahead during the first quarter of 2022, even as cases declined and local governments loosened masking and vaccination mandates.

Tech platforms sought total control over information related to COVID-19’s origins, the usefulness of cloth masks in preventing the virus’s spread, efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines and local government policies on supposed COVID-19 prevention. This Big Tech totalitarianism meant that social media weren’t permitted to critically analyze pandemic-related information on a factual basis.

Twitter even censored a news report covering a peer-reviewed study about vaccine materials transforming into human DNA! 

Just the News published a story March 3 reporting on a Swedish study that found the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine can convert to DNA inside human liver cells. 

But readers of Just the News were blocked from learning about the study. 

All 867,000 of Just the News founder John Solomon’s Twitter followers weren’t allowed to read a March 3 news story covering the Swedish study. Such censorship potentially jeopardized the ability of readers to seek appropriate medical care for COVID-19. The censored story’s subheadline also noted that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention claimed “the vaccine” could not turn into DNA.

Those readers should be grateful ther story was "censored" because it was full of misinformation. As an actual news operation found:

The study tested whether the vaccine’s mRNA could be converted to DNA, and found that this was the case in certain lab-altered liver cell lines under experimental conditions. It did not assess whether the vaccine alters the human genome, or what the effects of that would be, according to experts and the study authors. Experts say additional research is needed because the findings in the lab setting cannot be used to make inferences about what might happen in a human body.

The news operation went on to quote the study's authors as saying that “The results have in many cases been misinterpreted” and “there is no reason for anyone to change their decision to take the vaccine based on this study.”Bradley and Pariseau didn't mention that, meaning they're effectively endorsing falsehoods and misinformatoin -- also not a good look for so-called "media researchers."

The duo even tried to reframe clear anti-LGBT hate as "faith-based criticism":

Twitter censored Crisis Magazine Editor-in-Chief Eric Sammons’s faith-based criticism of secular norms in March, according to a March 29 CensorTrack entry.

"Just a reminder: Homosexual activity is a sin,” the head of the Catholic magazine tweeted. “Transgenderism is a mental illness. Abortion is murder."

Twitter locked Sammons’s account for a few days, claiming “hateful conduct,” until Sammons deleted the tweet.

Because this bogus "secondhand censorship" metric generates such an wildly and artificially huge number, the MRC can use it for propaganda purposes. And, indeed, MRC chief Brent Bozell ran to Fox News to tout them and hyperbolically declare that this has "never happened in human history," adding, "when was the last time you heard a liberal complain about being censored? It just doesn’t happen." He didn't mention that the MRC makes no effort to count them and simply runs up conservative numbers so has talking points he can spout on Fox News.

Bradly then went on the July 22 podcast of his boss, Tim Graham, to promote and rehash this bogus study. Even Graham admitted that Bradley was "coining a term" with "secondhand censorship," though he went on to do his own rehashing the Hunter Biden laptop saga as a prime example of "censorship," even though, as we documented, there was good reason not to trust the story when it came out because it was not independently verified and those pushing it were obvious pro-Trump partisans who could not be trusted. Graham agreed with Bradley's baseless assertion that the Ingraham-Gabbard video was "censored" (it wasn't) because she talked about trying to end the war in Ukraine.

Bradley actually defended Rogan's use of the N-word: "You might not like his use of the N-word, his referential use of the N-word -- i don't think he used it in a mean way at all -- but they couldn't consider the ideas he was putting forward in these podcasts because Big Tech just had to put the political clampdown because of political pressure from the left." Bradley didn't cite any examples of the "ideas" Rogan spent time on that didn't involve his use of the N-word or somehow negated his use of it. Graham responded that "the use of the N-word is allowed by rappers and other things on Spotify, so it breaks down to the usual line that you can't say it -- he can say it, you can't say it."

(The MRC played similar whataboutism with Rogan's embrace of the N-word when the story first broke in the middle of its defense of him.)

Graham worked up a little mock outrage that Rand Paul, "who's not just a senator but who's an actual medical doctor," was "censored" over COVID-related remarks. Bradley then laughably called Solomon "a longtime journlaist, reliable journalist" (um, no, he's not) and insisted that the study was "an academic study" by "some medical professionals in some European country" -- but he hid the fact that Solomon's reporting on the study was misleading. Bradley then went on to portray Sammons' anti-LGBT hate as merely speaking "simple, embedded Christian concepts," and that "censoring" him "is really an assault on the country itself," to which Graham responded by arguing that a Twitter account purporting to be God but actually written by an atheist should be banned for alleged blasphemy.

Tierin-Rose Mandelburg also promoted the bogus numbers in her July 27 CensorTrack podcast.

CNS Intern's One-Source Story Bashes Swear Words In 'Stranger Things'
Topic: CNSNews.com

Stephanie Samsel served up yet another example of unbalanced content from CNSNews.com's summer interns in a July 11 article:

During its first four seasons, Netflix’s “Stranger Things” aired an overall 217% increase in profanity and an overall 307% increase in violence, despite keeping a TV-14 rating, according to a new Parents Television and Media Council (PTC) report.

While the single use of “f**k” on cable television usually warrants a “TV-MA” rating, Netflix’s hit sci-fi and horror series “Stranger Things” has featured it over 20 times from Season 1 to Season 4.

From Season 1 to Season 4, PTC calculated a nearly 740% increase in “sh*t” and a 100% increase in “b*tch,” just two of five expletives listed.

There was also a steep spike in graphic violence (756%) across the total four seasons.

Still, “Stranger Things” has a strong reach to younger viewers.

Samsel quotes only the PTC, and doesn't didsclose theorganization 's right-wing ideology or that it was founded by her boss, Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell. Thus, she ignores that real-life teenagers use swear words, and it was important to the creators of the show, the Duffer brothers and their producer, Shawn Levy, to reflect that reality:

According to the brothers and Levy, the authenticity of pre-teens experimenting with cursing was their primary reason for insisting the kids curse. It helps that it’s also hilarious.

"Everyone wanted it to feel authentic and so I think once these kids, these words coming out of their mouths, it felt authentic," Matt [Duffer] said. "And then Gaten [Matarazzo] screaming 'shit' is just gold. It's comedy gold."

Given that "Stranger Things" is essentially a horror series, there will be violence. The PTC report doesn't define the differences between "violence," "graphic violence" and "gore," even though it's all meticulously counted and quantified. Instead, the report essentially advocated censorship, criticizing the show's season 4 opening episode, which starts with the aftermath of a massacre that includes children, and even though the show added a disclaimer warning of the graphic scenes given that the episode dropped shortly after the gun massacre at a school in Texas, that wasn't enough for the PTC: "=The shocking depiction of dead children would be insensitive even if the tragedy hadn’t occurred. We question why Netflix would invite viewers to be entertained by such a scene, and we decry TV-14 rating Netflix assigned to it."

Samsel was silent about this apparent call to censorship as she was about any view that didn't involve the PTC attacking the show.

MRC Whines That Assassinated Japanese Leader Accurately Labeled As On The Right
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center loves to be outraged that conservatives are accurately labeled as such, and it was so again following the assassination of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe. Curtis Houck whined in a July 8 post:

Much of the world awoke Friday to news that former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had been assassinated by a deranged suspect with a homemade shotgun. Instead of eulogizing Abe and expressing condolences to the Japanese people, CBS Mornings decided it would join the Associated Press and National Public Radio (NPR) in smearing Abe as “a polarizing figure,” “right-wing nationalist, and conservative” whose “political opinions were controversial.”

Foreign correspondent Elizabeth Palmer’s piece began as one would expect, stating from Tokyo that “[i]t would be hard to overstate just how much of a shock this is in normally nonviolent Japan. People are really feeling traumatized.”

Palmer shared what we know thus far about the assassination and remarked that “[a]lthough...Abe was giving a stump speech in a wide-open area” for a member of his party, “security...wasn't particularly tight” since “this is a country where yearly gun deaths typically number in the single digits.”

A fan of the Iranian regime (such as here, here, here, and here), Palmer then uncorked her hot takes, trashing the murdered former world leader as “[a] polarizing figure...a right-wing nationalist and conservative and a fierce supporter of Japan's military.”

Ignoring Abe’s ties to Presidents Biden and Obama, Palmer framed him as a Trumper:

Houck also whined that NPR referred to Abe in a tweet as "a divisive arch-conservarive," which he claimed is "reminding many of why they should be defunded." Aside from the weak retort about Abe's "ties to Presidents Biden and Obama," Houck did not dispute the accuracy of the description or why it was a "smear" to make an accurate statement -- he was simply angry that it was reported.

Nicholas Fondacaro further complained later that day, again attacking NPR and again playing whataboutism:

In the wake of the assassination of former conservative Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday, elements of the liberal media made sure to get their kicks in as they slapped on nasty labels to show their disgust with his politics. This comes in contrast to their glowing words and emotional goodbyes to communist dictators and murderers, and Muslim terrorists.

The anti-Abe pronouncement getting a lot of attention on Friday was NPR’s now-deleted Tweet describing the recently murdered world leader as a “divisive arch-conservative.” In the replacement tweet, they still had the knives out as they smeared him as an “ultranationalist.”

And in the piece itself, international correspondent John Ruwitch used the “ultra-nationalist” [sic] label again and left kinder words to people like Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi who said Abe was “a towering statesman, an outstanding leader, and a remarkable administrator."

Even in American politics, NPR couldn’t be bothered to cover the attempted assassination of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh. But in 2016, an NPR reporter described getting a kiss from the murderous communist Castro brothers of Cuba as the “blessing of the Holy Trinity.”

Fondacaro, like Houck, did not explain why that labeling of Abe isn't accurate or is "nasty."

Tim Graham brought this up in his July 8 podcast, again lashing out at NPR and following MRC practice by not explaining why the label is not accurate but iranting about the "notable lack of decency" anyway and demanding "diplomacy" and "sensitivity" in reporting, going on to whine: "I thought, oh, I don't know, Hideki Tojo was the ultranationalist, you know, the one who alighed with the Nazis. How can NPR be this tone-deaf?" He ranted that nobody uses the word "ultra" to label anyone on the left -- even though one need only to go back a couple weeks to the NewsBusters promotion for his own June 20 podcast to find him hyperbolically labeling Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin as an "ultraliberal."He wined further:

If Fox News did this to some socialist prime minister, especially some socialist minister who had been shot dead, the people would all lose their liberal minds, because socialists  are wonderful people. Yeah, apparently Abe's sin was China no likey. Russia wasn't really a fan. So if you upset China and North Korea and Russia, well, you're controversial. Who's letting these commies define what's controversial?

Yes, he really said "China no likey." Seems a tad racist.

He went on to claim that Abe's attempt to revise Japan's post-World War II constitution to remove its pacifism was what made him divisve: "Notice, pacifists are never divisive" and to whine that some reporters didn't hate Cuba's Fidel Castro enough when he died and spewed more hate on NPR.

NEW ARTICLE: Vladimir Putin's Favorite WND Columnist
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Scott Lively is using his WorldNetDaily columns to try and convince readers that the Russian leader isn't such a bad guy despite his invasion of Ukraine, largely based on their mutual hatred of LGBT people. Read more >>