Flashback: MRC's Incessant -- And Misdirected -- Whining That Hunter Biden Laptop Story Was 'Censored' Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has spent the past few years suffering a collective outbreak of Hunter Biden Derangement Syndrome, which focused largely on the the contents of Hunter's laptop, which the MRC repeatedly whined wasn't covered before the 2020 election even though its its pro-Trump promoters never offered independent verification of it at the time.
Let's go back in time to earlier this year and see how the MRC continued to peddle the bogus spin that the story was unjustly "censored" by the media. Geoffrey Dickens wrote in an April 18 post:
It was a bombshell story that could have swayed the 2020 presidential election.
Just weeks before Election Day, the New York Post printed an explosive story on the morning of October 14, 2020, that alleged Hunter Biden had corrupt business dealings with Ukraine and Joe Biden knew about them.
The Post story was full of stunning revelations. The “No.3 exec” of the Ukrainian firm Burisma (the firm that was paying Hunter $50,000 a month) asked Hunter Biden for to help the company. “The blockbuster correspondence” countered Joe Biden’s assertion that he “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.” The “correspondence” came from emails found in a laptop dropped off at a Delaware computer store. Also found in the laptop was video evidence of Hunter’s sexual behavior and drug use.
It wasn't until the eight paragraph of his item that Dicken recited the entirely reasonable justifications for downplaying the story:
A deep dive of the coverage shows that when the Big Three networks bother to mention the scandal they do so largely to knock it down, using dismissive verbiage like “dubious” “questionably-sourced story,” “old line of attack” and “unverified.”
But rather than blame the New York Post for not providing independent verification that might have overcome reasaonable accusations that the claims were questionably sourced -- and they arguably were, given the Post's status as a pro-Trump newspaper owned by Fox News' Rupert Murdoch and pro-Trump lackey Rudy Giuliani among its biggest promoters -- Dickesn attacks the non-right-wing media for not running with a clkearly partisan story that could not be verified. Still, Dickens went on to whine:
It all worked. Research conducted by The Polling Company for the Media Research Center after the 2020 election found that the media’s censorship of Biden scandals had a significant impact on the election. The survey found that 45.1% of Biden voters in seven key swing states said they were unaware of the financial scandal enveloping Biden and his son, Hunter. According to our poll, full awareness of the Hunter Biden scandal would have led 9.4% of Biden voters to abandon the Democratic candidate, flipping all six of the swing states he won to Trump, which would have given the former president 311 electoral votes.
Dickens did not explain why the media is obligated to treat as true a story it cannot verify and for which no verification has been provided.
An April 20 post by Brian Bradley was devoted to whining that "big tech" had "suppressed" the story:
Twitter and Facebook worked in lockstep to restrict the flow of the Hunter Biden laptop story just before the 2020 presidential election. These platforms stifled the spread of that story at the same time that Big Media did, as MRC research found.
Facebook’s suppression broke the platform’s own fact-checking policy, and Twitter’s attempt to cancel the story so outrageously violated content moderation norms that it drew criticism from the likes of leftist Poynter Institute fact-checkers. Even then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey criticized his platform after the fact.
Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone announced the platform had preempted third-party fact-checks on the Hunter Biden story the day it broke on Oct. 14, 2020, and limited its spread moving forward. Stone has a long history working directly for Democrats, and Facebook’s hair-trigger, broad-brush blackout blatantly broke the platform’s content moderation policy.
[...]
Twitter responded to the New York Post’s bombshell Hunter Biden report by disabling the link to the story on the day it was released, and claimed: “Warning: this link may be unsafe.” Twitter then restricted the Post account from Oct. 14 to Oct. 30.
As with Dickens, Bradley's rage is misdirected. He did not demand that the Post offer independent verification of the story. Instead, he continued to whine:
Facebook “fact-checker” Lead Stories released at least 15 so-called “fact-checks” in direct support of Joe and Hunter Biden in the two weeks before the Nov. 3, 2020, Election Day. Those “fact-checks” sought to rebut claims of Hunter’s alleged drug use and alleged sexual misconduct, along with assertions that corporate media didn’t give the Hunter Biden story enough coverage.
Bradley offered no evidence that there was anything inaccurate about Lead Stories' fact-checks -- something you'd think he would want to do if he's accusing Lead Stories of falsely besmirching the story. Also: Fox News is part of a large corporation; why doesn't Bradly consider it part of the "corporate media"?
Of course, the MRC will never blame its fellow members of the right-wing media bubble for failing to offer independent verification of the story so that it could have been taken more seriously. If the "liberal media" can be blamed, it will be -- even if they were following good journalistic practice by raising questions about a story that lacked verification that its promoters refused to provide.
WorldNetDaily's Art Moore wrote in an Aug. 18 article:
Led by a Nobel Prize laureate, more than 1,100 scientists and scholars have signed a document declaring climate science is based more on personal beliefs and political agendas than sound, rigorous science.
The World Climate Declaration states climate science "should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific."
"Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures," the declaration reads.
The declaration was organized by Climate Intelligence, an independent policy foundation founded in 2019 by Dutch emeritus professor of geophysics Guus Berkhout and Dutch science journalist Marcel Crok.
Unsurprisingly, there's a lot that Moore is not reporting just in these first few paragraphs. As a fact-checker found, the "Nobel Prize laureate" in question, Ivar Giaever -- whom Moore doesn't otherwise refeence in his article -- won for his work on superconductors, not climate science; Beruhout and Crok, meanwhile, have been accused of taking money from fossil-fuel interests, indicated paid bias on their part. Further, most of the signatories to the petition are political activists and scientists who have no connection with climate science. As another commentator noted, "Looking at the list of signatories, there are a lot of engineers, medical doctors, and petroleum geologists and almost no actual climate scientists."
Also note the stealth edit: While the headline originally claimed 1,200 signatories -- as shown by the original front-page promo art and the URL -- it was changed along the line to state there were "more than 1,100," That's because, according to the fact-checker, the actual number of signatories was 1,107. Weird how Moore descided to make that edit for accuracy but clearly never fact-checked anything else in his piece.
Moore continued to uncritically repeat the anti-climate change talking points:
The World Climate Declaration points out that since emerging from the Little Ice Age in the mid-19th century, the world has warmed significantly less than predicted by the U.N.'s International Panel on Climate Change's models
"The gap between the real world and the modeled world tells us that we are far from understanding climate change," the WCD states.
The declaration argues Earth’s climate has varied, with cold and warm periods, for as long as the planet has existed, and it is "no surprise that we are experiencing a period of warming."
The climate models "are not remotely plausible as global policy tools," ignoring, for one, the benefits of carbon dioxide, which is "not a pollutant."
"It is essential to all life on Earth," the declaration says. "Photosynthesis is a blessing. More CO2 is beneficial for nature, greening the Earth; additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also good for agriculture, increasing the yield of crops worldwide."
In fact, climate models have proven to be largely accurate; one study examined 17 climate models and found "14 out of the 17 model projections indistinguishable from what actually occurred." Observers also exposed the talking points Moore is mindlessly repeating for the denialist tropes they are:
The World Climate Declaration doesn’t just attack climate modeling. It also rehashes several well-known “climate denial” tropes that have long been used in persuasion campaigns that were often traced back to the fossil fuel industry and other players who benefit from unfettered industrial development, said Brendan DeMelle, executive director of Desmog, an investigative climate research organization.
Those tropes include downplaying the role of humans in causing rapid climate change by suggesting natural causes are as much or more of a factor, sowing unfounded doubt in the sciences and implying researchers are pursuing nefarious motives, suggesting that increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere are actually a “good thing” because they help nurture the growth of plants, claiming that global warming doesn’t actually impact the frequency and intensity of natural disasters and suggesting that addressing climate change is incompatible with economic stability.
Moore won't tell you this because it conflicts with WND's right-wing editorial agenda, even though refusal to report all relevant sides of a story means Moore is a propagandist, not a journalist. But then, propaganda and not journalism is pretty much the point of WND these days.
Newsmax Columnist: Non-Reprentational Art That Doesn't Reflect 'Western Heritage' Is 'Bad' Topic: Newsmax
Earlier this year, WorldNetDaily columnist Jerry Newcombe had a tantrum over art he didn't like. Alexandra York served up her own anti-art-I-don't like rant in an Aug. 29 Newsmax column:
What is "bad" art? In order to answer this question, we must first define what is good art.
Taking this article as a jumping off point, we can understand the values that can be expressed in established western art forms. This is not to infer that eastern art has no value — it most certainly can — but to emphasize how meaningful art in general has the ability to enrich our lives if it is intelligible and communicates life-serving values.
It follows, then, that "bad" art communicates life-harming values. How does it do this? Let us count the ways:
In order to communicate anything the themes or subjects of art forms must be intelligible, so objects rendered in painting and sculpture must be discernable, sounds in music must have tonal development, words in literature must have meaning, and so on.
Splashes of paint on canvas (or worse) and piles of bricks (or worse) communicate nothing intelligible. The same can be said of sounds emitted by the strumming of piano strings which is not music, or the tossing together of useless salad-words which is not literature, so why should these be labeled "bad" art, and why are they "harmful"?
Firstly, non-objective art is not "art" at all. It is not even a valid "craft" like decorative art— tile and rug design, for example — which requires a defined skill set.
But since non-art is presented as art in exhibits, galleries and museums, we need to label it "bad" art because it does not meet the primary criteria of communicative intelligibility.
And lastly, these sorts of "art" presentations are harmful in that — if taken seriously and find acceptance on the part of viewers, listeners, and readers — they can cause sloppy cognitive and psychological habits that, in turn, can inhibit the rational thought processes necessary to live a successful and happily fulfilled life.
In short: abstract art or any other art that is not directly representational is "bad." Shse continued in this vein:
Good art is a perceptually beautiful physical manifestation of life-enriching values, and life-enriching values are selected via reason, and reason entails judgment to determine the validity of values in order to select those that are most beneficial as life-serving principles. Bad art repudiates the very mental processes required to live a fruitful and joyful human life.
Ergo: As we avoid poisoned food to maintain the life and health of our bodies, so we should avoid "art" poisoned by deleterious ideas or lack thereof to enter our minds and pollute our souls.
Good art dramatizes the beauties and complexities of nature and human nature.
It empathizes with our sorrows and celebrates our joys.
It is food for the soul and can nurture our mental wellbeing while, at the same time, confirming our rationally achieved value system and inspiring us onward and upward to the best within us.
Not only is bad art bad for us in the cognitive and psychological ways heretofore delineated, but legitimatizing any so-called "art" that degrades the splendors and the possibilities of humankind becomes an act of spiritual suicide.
The "article" York referred to early was actually her own 2018 Newsmax column in which she explicitly argued that the only"good" art is that which is explictly representational and advances "Western heritage":
Driven underground by academics, critics, and artists of modernist and post-modern art for decades and largely still untaught in learning institutions, the crafts of representationalism in painting and sculpture have continued to be taught by a handful of artist-teachers who refused to let their art forms perish. We owe these men and women — now in their seventies, eighties, and even nineties — a debt of gratitude for safeguarding the techniques passed down from Greece through the Italian Renaissance to nineteenth-century Europe and then on to America in the early twentieth. It is their students — now professional artists and teachers in their own right — who are presently of an age to lead the resurgence of interest in these art forms based in established Western art traditions. Novelists, poets, and composers, too, are consulting the past for techniques to help them contemporize the everlasting verities of life with bracing relevance to our own time and place in history.
So the crafts of the great arts of Western civilization are surfacing again. But what of ideas? Many artists, today, succeed in capturing reality, but how many create a heightened reality that not only brings into sharper focus selected aspects of life through compelling aesthetics but also communicates ideas? Without authentic relevance to the fundamentals of the contemporary human condition, art becomes either decorative or banal. Without ideas informing it, art becomes a pretty pastime.
Most artists are not philosophers; they are, rather, more sensitive souls who intuitively incorporate value premises into their work. Great artists, however, whose work reverberates with lasting significance are fully conscious of the underlying themes expressed through their work; they, in fact, use form and aesthetics for the express purpose of communicating — beautifully — the ideational content of their art. For these superlative artists, nothing is accidental; they select and include in their art only the requisite essentials necessary to communicate inner meaning. Such artists distill the quintessence of one image or one fleeting moment (or in literature and music, one finite time-experience) for their own sake first; they make it “stand still” so they can experience and return at will to the burning center of their creation for rousing renewal. Then they pass their vision on to us for further contemplation of the beauty and values inherent in the work.
[...]
A landscape painting made of morning light arching into the colors of a rainbow that hovers over an apple-green orchard may guide our vision the next time we tarry in the countryside. A flower painting of scintillating colors and luscious textures can whet our senses to appreciate the fragility and translucent wonder of petals soft and fragrant, not to mention give us pause to consider the transience of all life, including our own. A depiction of a hero or heroine can encourage us to rise to our own best self.
York did acknowledge that "A nude male or female sculpture can cause us to marvel at the inherent splendor of the human body — the temple of our soul," so apparently she's not a total prude.
In an about-face from the previous month, the headline of Susan Jones' CNS lead story on August's employment statistics actually matches the copy -- and the news was so good that even Jones couldn't quite figure out a way to downplay it:
Heading into Labor Day, the U.S. Labor Department on Friday issued a mostly positive report on the U.S. employment situation -- the unemployment rate rising to 3.7 percent in August from 3.5 percent in July; but the labor force participation rate also rising three-tenths of a point to 62.4 percent, a move in the right direction, as 612,000 people entered the labor force.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the nonfarm economy added 315,000 jobs in August, below above the 526,000 (revised) added in July and in line with the 300,000 estimate for August. Notable job gains occurred in professional and business services, health care, and retail trade.
(In a separate report, BLS noted that the number of job openings was little changed at 11,239,000 million on the last business day of July.)
The unemployment rate increased two tenths of a percent, to 3.7 percent from 3.5 percent as the number of unemployed people -- no job but actively looking for one -- increased by 344,000 in August.
Notably, the number of employed Americans also climbed by 442,000 in August to 158,732,000, a Biden-era high and close to the Trump-era high of 158,866,000 set in February 2020, the start of the COVID pandemic.
So to fill out her story, Jones wrote a section on "price stablity" -- a completely separate subject from employment -- highlighting how Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell "warned that inflation reduction -- what the Fed calls 'price stability' -- will be painful."
Either because the numbers came out on a holiday weekend or because CNS didn't want to report any more good news about a Democratic president, this is the only story on August's numbers; editor Terry Jerry couldn't be moved to contributte his usual sidebar on manufacaturing jobs -- perhaps because they increased by 22,000 in August.
The MRC's Hot Drag Queen-Hating Summer Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has done a lotof hating of drag queens this year, partricularly during Pride Month in June. But it spent all summer spewing hate at them as well. Nicholas Fondacaro devoted a July 29 post to complaining that the co-hosts of "The View" don't hate drag queens as much as he and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis does:
On Friday’s edition of The View, the show essentially came out in support of exposing kids to sexualized drag shows by decrying Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis for filing a complaint against a venue that exposes children. Co-host and “Republican” Ana Navarro was irritated by the move and whined to queer star Billy Porter that this was happening to the place she had her bridal shower.
Porter, who was on the show to promote his new Amazon Prime movie Anything’s Possible (which is about a trans high school student finding love), had some thoughts about Florida but held back saying “I can't say it on daytime!” “Oh, God. Here we go,” he proclaimed in fear as she started her story.
“There seems to be this renewed anti-LGBTQ campaign of wanting to portray LGBTQ as if they were groomers and all this stuff,” she bemoaned.
The MRC has previouslyattacked Porter for his gender-bending sense of fashion. Also, Fondacaro didn't explain how a man wearing a dress is, in and of itself, "sexualized."
Fondacaro ranted about drag shows again in an Aug. 1 post:
In something of a double-down to a segment from last week, co-host Ana Navarro spent part of Monday’s The View making the totally rational argument (sarcasm) that sexually explicit drag shows weren’t that bad for kids, since they aren't deadly like guns. She also claimed red states were like Cuba and North Korea in that they’re supposedly barring their citizens from leaving their borders.
[...]
Navarro went on to complain that those opposed to kids at drag shows are just “cherry-picking” their outrage. She then made the ridiculous argument that the drag shows weren’t that bad because they don’t kill kids as guns do:
Listen, I looked at the top causes of endangerment for children, of children's death. It's firearm. It's car accidents. It's drownings. It is not drag queens. I've yet to see a kid that dies from being exposed to a drag queen
Again, Fondacaro never explained what, exactly, was "sexually explicit" about the drag show he and DeSantis are attacking.
In another Aug. 1 post, Michel Ippolito screeched about a drag show in a church:
Just when you thought the drag queen shows could not get any worse, they just did. The drag queens have moved on from twerking in front of children to making their home in sacred religious places.
An Episcopal Church invited a drag queen to perform a show in its pride “chapel” in New York City.
The video showed how religious these degenerate leftists are. But instead of worshiping Jesus, these lunatics worship a burly man dressed like a woman. A man who looks to be in charge of the church introduces the drag performer, Brita Filter, as the main star. “It’s Brita Filter,” the man says, “and she is the queen of New York!” Then the hip-hop music begins to play, and the congregation begins barking like seals as Brita Filter walks down the aisle. The congregation’s cheers get louder, and they stand up like the president is walking by. Finally, Brita Filter makes her way in front of the altar and displays himself for all to see. He happily waves and continues to receive applause from the sheepish audience. The lack of respect from the audience is damming.
Here’s another spot you can mark on your map as an inappropriate place for kids. The left does not care for anything outside of their radical ideologies.
Ippolito didn't explain how drag is an "ideology."
An Aug. 29 post by Matt Philbin was a meltdown over how the Washington Post committed the offense of admitting that drag shows exist:
The Washington Post; (Democracy Dies on Page One) is all in on the trans mania. Last week, education reporter Moriah Balingit dropped a couple thousand words moaning about a Kentucky transgender middle schooler sho can’t play field hockey. Today, dance critic Sarah L. Kaufman fires up her freak finder to recommend “Six drag queens you should be following on YouTube.”
Only The Post gives you this kind of “news you can use.” And Kaufman is an enthusiastic guide to girly boy burlesque. “Watching skilled performers do, say and be whatever they want — that’s exhilarating,” Kaufman writes. And it sure seems to blow wind up her skirt: “After all, not caring much about norms and outdated whispers is what got the queens into their wigs and sparkles in the first place.”
However, now that every minor cable network worthy of its name has drag-themed shows, and gender perversion is as pervasive as disco was in the 70s, it all seems a bit dull. No wonder Drag Queen Story Hour is a thing – let your freak flag fly around toddlers to recapture some of that old “transgressive” magic.
Tierin-Rose Mandelburg had an even bigger meltdown in an Sept. 6 post over a drag show that she got tipped off about from the transphobes at the LibsofTikTok Twitter account (which the MRC disgustingly defended after a Washington Post reporter exposed its proprietor, Chaya Raichik):
Someone get the bleach. I need it for my eyes.
According to Prevo, Utah, back-to-school day this year needed not only a drag queen in attendance, but many drag queens in mini-dresses dancing on stage for, well, everyone. Including kids.
“Jenna Tailia,” whose name when sounded out reads “Genitalia,” was one of the performers featured at the school's “all-ages back to school drag extravaganza,” LibsofTikTok reported.
Speaking of genitalia, “Ms.” Jenna had his own practically hanging out when he did the splits for the audience mid-performance and finished the number on his knees with his crotch taking center stage.
If you watch the video, you can see what looks like a three-to-four-year-old little girl sitting in the front row, watching the erotic display of junk literally being shoved in her face.
Other performers included “Ana Lee Kage" (a.k.a., “Anal Leakage") "Peter Pansy," and "Kitty Kitty" - all of whom were dubbed “incredible.”
The event, called “Back to School Pride,” was sponsored by the RaYnbow Collective, a LGBTQ advocacy group for Brigham Young University.
So it was for college students? Funny how Mandelburg waited until the seventh paragraph to mention that fact while suggesting the show was being staged specifically for children. She wenbt on to falsely smear drag performer as "pedophiles" and concluded with a rant:
Though this disturbing and demonic event is still shocking in its display, it isn’t surprising. This is exactly the content that the left's woke mob wants to promote and it's not going to stop until people stop being brainwashed by the true root of things like this: evil.
Remember, if the MRC doesn't like it, it's obviously "evil.
CNS' Jeffrey Dishonestly Bashes Deficits Under Biden, Gives Trump A Pass Topic: CNSNews.com
CNS editor Terry Jeffrey's dishonesty about federal government spending continues in his Aug. 17 column:
In the first 18 full months that Joe Biden has been president — February 2021 through July 2022 — the federal government has spent $9,728,646,000,000, according to data published in the Monthly Treasury Statement.
Even when the historical spending numbers are adjusted for inflation into July 2022 dollars (using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' inflation calculator), no recent president comes close to having spent that kind of money in their first year and a half in office.
President Donald Trump spent $7,274,266,740,000 in July 2022 dollars in his first 18 full months. President Barack Obama spent $7,166,360,490,000. President George W. Bush spent $4,835,392,120,000. President Bill Clinton spent $4,287,553,940,000. President George H.W. Bush spent $3,705,774,660,000. President Ronald Reagan spent $3,123,980,640,000.
It is true that the United States is a more populous country now than it was in July 1982, when Reagan completed his first 18 full months in office, but federal spending has grown significantly faster than the population.
It's also true that Jeffrey made no mention of mitigating factors that explain the higher early-term spending under Obama and Biden -- there was a recession at the start of Obama's presidential term and a pandemic at the start of Biden's -- and there was no such financial crisis at the start of Trump's term. And picking the first 18 months of a presidency conveniently allows Jeffrey to also omit the pandemic-related spending -- and related deficits -- during the final year of Trump's presidency.
Jeffrey went on to target Biden further:
Biden is the spending champion of American presidents — both in total overall spending and per capita spending.
But that is not his only achievement. He has also been collecting record taxes.
[...]
Yet despite the record taxes the Biden administration is collecting, the administration is still running a deficit.
According to the data published in the Monthly Treasury Statement, the federal government ran a cumulative deficit of $2,765,962,000,000 from February 2021 through July 2022.
The only president who ran a bigger deficit in his first 18 months was Obama, whose cumulative deficit hit $2,975,995,260,000 in constant July 2022 dollars in the period from February 2009 through July 2010.
The $2,765,962,000,000 deficit that Biden has run in his first year and a half in office equals approximately $8,310 for each of the 332,838,183 people in this country.
Again, Jeffrey failed to mention that much of the deficit Biden started with at the beginning of his presidency came under Trump, who had racked up nearly $8 trillion in deficits during his presidency. Also going unmentioned by Jeffrey is that the federal deficit will be dropping from $3.13 trillion in fiscal year 2020 -- the last year of Trump's presidency -- to an estimated $1 trillion for the current fiscal year ending Sept. 30.
But Jeffrey doesn't care about reporting facts -- an odd stance for a guy who runs an alleged "news" organization -- he merely wants to attack Biden. He concluded by complaining about the the spending toa address climate change in the Inflation Reduction Act and how the bill "includes the terms "greenhouse gas" and "greenhouse gases" a combined 138 times," going on to sneer: "If there is anything emitting gas these days, it is the man in the Oval Office."
MRC Can't Stop Lashing Out At Beto O'Rourke Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center got mad at Beto O'Rourke for calling out Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (whom O'Rourke is running against for the seat) after the Uvalde massacre, and i continues to be triggered by him. Michael Ippolito whined in an Aug. 12 post:
Another day, another leftist politician acting like an unhinged lunatic. This time it's everyone’s favorite non-Mexican furry, Beto O’Rourke.
[...]
The tweet shows that Beto took the time to go after an Abbott supporter who began laughing while the gubernatorial candidate was talking about the Uvalde Massacre. “It may be funny to you motherf*cker, but its not funny to me, OK?,” Beto says to the cheers of his supporters. Beto seems pretty upset over the man who interrupted his event. Did he forget about the time he interrupted a press conference on the Uvalde shooting? Does he deserve the title of motherf*cker too?
The video reveals that the Abbott supporter was not laughing at the Uvalde shooting, but at Beto’s inaccurate history of the AR-15. Beto claimed these guns were “originally designed for use on the battlefield in Vietnam to penetrate an enemy soldier’s helmet at 500 feet and knock him down dead.”
Actually, the Reason article Ippolito linked to in order to claim that the man was laughing at "Beto’s inaccurate history of the AR-15" offers no actual proof of that. And as we've previously noted, the AR-15 was, in fact, designed for war -- a fact that Ippolito suggested was false.
Ippolito somehow found his manhood threatened by this exchange: "Beto has once again displayed his lack of respect and lack of masculinity. Just another day in leftist fairytale land." To drive that purported lack of masculinity home further, Ippolito headline his post "Beto Male." But Ippolito didn't explain what, exactly, is not "masculine" about O'Rourke defending the honor of children murdered in a gun massacre.
An Aug. 22 item by P.J. Gladnick complained that a Washington Post profile of O'Rourke didn't spend enough time on an issue Gladnick and his fellow Republicans think O'Rourke is vulnerable on:
On Sunday, The Washington Post published a long article online that, in reality, was a loving paean to far-left Democrat and perpetual (losing) candidate Beto O'Rourke.
Although O'Rourke is running for governor of Texas, The Post conveniently skipped any mention of perhaps the Lone Star State's top issue in " Beto O’Rourke’s risky quest for votes in deep-red Texas," which would be the U.S.-Mexico border.
The article by Jade Yuan -- which appeared in Monday's print edition on page one of the Style section -- mentioned the border only twice as geographic reference points:
[...]
And that was it. A grand total of just two mentions of the border despite illegal border crossings and the massive illegal invasions being at the top of the concerns of the deep-red sections of the border state of Texas. Of course, bringing up an issue which O'Rourke would obviously want to avoid while campaigning in the deep red parts of Texas would interfere with what is essentially an Post tribute to him.
Gladnick did not explain why he thinks a legitimate reporter should be taking journalism advice from a right-wing blogger.
NEW ARTICLE: Cashill's Cornucopia of Obama Conspiracies Continues Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily columnist Jack Cashill remains obsessed with the Obamas though they left the White House years ago. Did we mention that he has written yet another anti-Obama book? Read more >>
MRC Smears Businesses Who Cover Abortion (And The Women Themselves) As Serving Moloch Topic: Media Research Center
In a 2012 Media Research Center post, Paul Wilson was offended that a Washington Post opinion piece after the Sandy Hook gun massacre referenced another opinion piece that described America's gun culture as "our Moloch," whining that teh gun lobby was described as "sacrificing children to a pagan god" and "American gun-owners as idolaters." But Wilson pointed the way to how his fellow right-wingers should properly use the reference: "But the “Moloch” rhetoric might come with more weight from a woman who doesn’t actively defend the murder of thousands of children in the womb each day."
The MRC eventually started leaning into that attack. An October 2021 post by Matt Philbin touted a highly restrictive Texas anti-abortion law: 'The law has all the usual feminists, sexual revolutionaries and Moloch worshipers in a tizzy."
After the leak of a draft of the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, the MRC -- already anti-abortion extremists to the point that it endorses an Orwelliansurveillance state for women who might cross state lines to have one -- ran with the narrative that supporting abortion, and having one, was the equivalent of making sacrifices to Moloch. A May 12 post by Matt Philbin invented what he called the "Moloch List" of businesses who would pay travel expenses for employees who have abortions:
Abortion as an employment benefit? If you work for the right companies. Whether the Dobbsdecision reverses Roe v. Wade or not, the left’s meltdown over the draft decision has offered some big corporations a new way to virtue signal. They’re boasting that if employees must travel out of state to obtain legal abortions, the companies will pick up the travel costs.
So far, they’re mostly the Big Tech usual suspects, but some other industries represented on the Moloch List. The list is probably incomplete and the number of companies subsidizing infanticide will, tragically, grow.
Michael Ippolito bumped up the number to the "Moloch 20" in a June 27 post:
With the left completely melting down over Roe v. Wade, woke corporations have found a new way to virtue signal: Abortion access as a fringe benefit.
MRC Culture is keeping a running tally of companies offering to help employees from states where abortion is illegal to travel to murder their children.
Ippolito ranted in a July 25 post: "The left’s fight for abortion continues to become more desperate than they are willing to work with the billionaires they hate. Glad to see the teamwork done to feed Moloch!"
Philbin devoted an Aug. 19 post to attacking Google for covering abortions:
Yeah, it’s funny to remember the days when Google’s corporate motto was “Don’t be evil.” And yet it seems that a lot of the company’s employees don’t think it’s evil enough. They think Google should be a leader of the Moloch List – companies that lavish time and money on employees to kill their unborn children.
In the antiseptic, NARAL-approved language of The Washington Post, “Google staffers are calling on the tech giant to take greater steps to protect workers’ reproductive health, including by expanding travel benefits for medical services to contractors and halting political donations to antiabortion groups.”
Google gives money to antiabortion groups? Who knew?
Philbin also makes it clear that he thinks women who have abortion are sluts:
You know, those salt-of-the-earth laborers with the powered scooters and $14 coffee drinks? They’re organizing for the right to convenient sex. The capitalist exploiters are already shaking so much they can’t keep their monocles on.
An Aug. 23 post by Philbin lashed out at "Moloch List" member Yelp for putting accurate descriptions of crisis pregnancy centers on its website:
For the abortion-worshipping left, every live baby is a missed opportunity. For every unterminated pregnancy there’s a woman who can no longer have a big powerful career, carefree autonomy and meaningless casual sex. It’s a feminist nightmare.
So it helps to have tech companies like Yelp on their side. And make no mistake: Yelp has definitely chosen a side. It was an early entrant to the Moloch List, corporations who made a public show of offering to pick up abortion (and “gender affirming”) travel costs for employees who live in less bloodthirsty states.
Now, as reported by Axios, Yelp is putting warnings on listings for crisis pregnancy centers, lest babies slip through the abortion net.
Philbin didn't explain why accurately identifying crisis pregnancy centers as the anti-abortion activists they are is such a bad thing.
The MRC was also directly attacking women themselves as serving sacrifices to Moloch. Ippolito complained in a July 19 post about a Teen Vogue article on pro-choice men:
The next pundit was Bryan, who portrayed abortion as the savior of his family. Bryan, who forced his girlfriend to have an abortion, was happy that his mom also got an abortion because of his cool stuff. “The many opportunities that [decision] afforded us later in life, things my siblings and I probably took for granted at the time, like organic food, extracurriculars, cultural enrichment, and having our in-state tuition paid for,” he stated. Glad to see Bryan thought his sacrifice to Moloch was worth it.
Ippolito went on to suggest his manhood was being threatened by this article: "Instead of wanting strong men to raise families, Teen Vogue wants weak men to waive responsibility and encourage the murder of children."
Two days later, Ippolito lashed out at actress Jennifer Grey for having an abortion as a teenager, dismissing her as an "irrelevant Hollywood lefty is coming out of the woods to give another dumb take on abortion" and sneereing, "Once again, another Hollywood leftie decided to have a meltdown over the inability to sacrifice her child to Moloch."
At the MRC, if you don't agree with them, you're not just wrong, you're evil.
CNS Continued To Push Pro-Trump, Anti-FBI Narrative After Raid Topic: CNSNews.com
After the FBI search of Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, CNSNews.com predictably started spouting right-wing talking points and largely censored the legal justifications, and it continued to do so. An Aug. 11 article by Melanie Arter on Attorney General Merrick Garland admitting he approved the search warrant that led to the raid complained that "The attorney general did not address why the raid was conducted in the manner it was instead of issuing a subpoena. He also did not say what the FBI was looking for in the raid.
in a series of posts on Aug. 11 and 12 posts, CNS latched on to the right-wing narrative du jour that the raid is somehow evidence that the FBI is corrupt:
Susan Jones tried to further the Republican narrative in an article accusing Democrats of pushing a narrative and mocking her for giving a "convoluted answer":
At her Friday news conference, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) advanced the Democrat/media narrative that comments from former President Donald Trump and his Republican supporters following the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago are inciting threats of violence against law enforcement.
Pelosi told reporters, "You would think there'd be an adult in the Republican room that would say, just calm down, see what the facts are and let's go from that, instead of, again, instigating assaults on law enforcement."
The same day Jones bashed Pelosi, a man who professed his desire to kill FBI agents in posts on Trump's Truth Social website following the FBI raid fired a nail gun at an FBI office, then led law enforcment on a change and died in a shootout. CNS censored news of this violent crime against law enforcement from its readers, vaguely alluding to it only in an Aug. 15 article by Jones mostly dedicated to criticizing Democrats who called out Trump, noting that "Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), a member of the House intelligence committee, condemned violence by anyone, including Trump supporters."
CNS cranked out more anti-FBI and pro-Trump stenography on Aug. 15 and 16:
Another Aug. 16 article by Craig Bannister quoted onetime acting Trump attorney general Mark Whittaker claiming that "The Justice Department (DOJ) can “lower the temperature” of the anger against the department for its raid of former President Donald Trump’s home, by simply releasing the affidavit used to justify the raid and answering the public’s questions." He too did not mention the gunman who talked of killing FBI agents on Trump's social media site then tried to kill them. Also that day, Bannister wrote an article touting poll from right-skewing Rasmussen to claim that Garland "has a negative favorability rating among voters, and more think he’s doing a worse, not better, job than most who’ve held his job in the past," adding that "The national poll of 1,000 likely voters was conducted August 11 and August 14, following the August 8 raid on the Mar-a-Lago home of former President Donald Trump, which Attorney General Garland has said he personally authorized."
An anonymously written Aug. 16 article, however, played the ol' Clinton Equivocation card to distract from Trump's misdeed by rehashing the Hillary Clinton email controversy:
The Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Justice released a report in June 2018 that stated that the FBI had “identified ’81 email chains containing approximately 193 individual emails that were classified from the CONFIDENTIAL to TOP SECRET levels…and sent to or from [Hillary] Clinton’s personal server.”
The IG cited the information from a “letterhead memorandum” (LHM) that the FBI produced about its investigation of the matter.
The IG report also noted that “[n]one of the emails…included a header or footer with classification markings.”
CNS made no mention of the fact that Hillary's email controversy was much different from the illegal hoarding of classified documents Trump is accused of doing.
Arter uncritically quoted CNS' favorite alleged legal expert to attack the FBI and defend Trump in an Aug. 18 article:
The warrant used to search former President Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago was unconstitutional, because it’s too broad, conservative talk show host Mark Levin said Thursday.
Furthermore, he said that the Espionage Act doesn’t apply to a president, regardless of what these federal prosecutors are trying to concoct.”
But all the right-wing FBI-hating apparently got to be too much for CNS, even in defense of Trump. An Aug. 22 article by Arter highlighted that "Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said last week that the GOP shouldn’t blame the FBI agents who raided Mar-a-Lago, because they were just doing their job and carrying out “a lawful search warrant that a magistrate signed off on," adding that "if the GOP is going to be the party of supporting law enforcement, law enforcement includes the FBI."
MRC Finds A Content 'Censorship' Policy It Likes (When Liberal Views Are Involved) Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Tierin-Rose Mandelburg unironically wrote in a July 26 post:
Democrats may not be able to govern their way out of a paper bag, but they're champion complainers.
The Disney backed streaming service Hulu is under fire after refusing to stream advertisements for certain democratic campaigns that smeared Republican rhetoric, according to The Washington Post.
Hulu is a video streaming platform that plays movies, tv episodes and even Hulu original series. The platform also includes advertisements and commercials for a short time between segmented clips. Typically those ads are about lotion, new cars or new menu items at a fast food chain but occasionally, campaign ads are run.
Hulu has a policy that prohibits ads on its platform that are “deemed controversial.” Supposedly the “Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Democratic Governors Association tried to purchase joint ads on abortion and guns on Hulu on July 15” and Hulu never ran the ads.
Hulu’s advertisement committee probably just didn’t want viewers grumpy at them if they were to show ads that leaned heavily on one side or the other for topics as hot button as abortion and guns.
In natural lefty fashion, Democrats threw a tantrum.
Yes, you read that right. The MRC -- which regularly throws tantrums and screams "censorship" whenever a right-winger gets caught violating the terms of service of social-media sites -- is suddenly respectful of the private property of others and is demanding that users obey the rules.
It gets better. After citing a few examples of critics of Hulu's policy (including "One she/her/hers blue check"), one of which called it "censorship," Mandelburg huffed:"Good lord. These people need hobbies." No more so than Mandelburg and the rest of the MRCers who freak out at any attempt by private social media companies to enforce their terms of service.
She went on to complain that Hulu partially capitulated (the way the MRC demands social media companies do every time a right-winger gets busted violating terms of service):
In the end, Hulu did run the ads of one Democratic candidate, Suraj Patel, that showed images from Jan. 6. Supposedly someone familiar with Hulu’s advertising policies said that Hulu “does not publicly disclose its advertising guidelines but that they prohibit advertising that takes a position on a controversial issue, regardless of whether it is a political ad. The ads are reviewed on a case-by-case basis, with edits sometimes recommended to the advertiser.”
Perhaps Hulu should just stick to the burger and shampoo ads as it appears that chaos is going to erupt no matter what they choose to air!
Mandelburg has never made that demand of social media companies given that chaos (in the form of organized right-wing media swarms formed in part by the MRC) will erupt no matter what they do.
WND Columnist Still Defending Putin Topic: WorldNetDaily
Several WorldNetDaily columnists took Russia's side around the start of Russia's war on Ukraine, and some have continued to. One of those is David McQuade, who was still insisting in an Aug. 1 column that Russia still has some sort of moral high ground against Ukraine and the West:
Not to suggest the oligarchy ruling class is any better for the average Russian, but after the fall of the Soviet Union and communism, religion and biblical values at least made a powerful resurgence and now play a vital role in the region. As a result, values, or the perceived lack thereof, serve as a cudgel on both sides of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Western values – whatever they are at the moment, inexplicable and forever morphing – are directly fueling the world's escalating and volatile geopolitical conflicts.
To be clear, Vladimir Putin is no saint. However, we've made it an easy lift for him to leverage what he calls "decadent Western values" against us and seize moral high ground with other world powers and his citizens alike. That includes the influential Russian Orthodox Church.
The Wall Street Journal reported this week:
"In Moscow, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, blessed Russian troops and proclaimed the war in Ukraine a metaphysical conflict between the faithful of God and a 'decadent West.'"
Regardless of what our culturally naïve political class indignantly insists, it was perceived a moral imperative for Putin and his religious allies to take back critical territory along his border that for a century was a part of the Russian state, lest it too become a "decadent," card-carrying, missile-carrying member of NATO with a president chosen and groomed by the U.S. (talk about "foreign interference").
Ukraine's corrupt oligarchy has thrown in with "decadent Western values" so completely that its newly sainted president dances in high heels and drag when not sitting for Vanity Fair features. No wonder he's proven such an iconic hero to the modern left – and such an enemy of the Orthodox Church.
Months after most rational people -- and even most rational right-wingers -- stopped trying to justify Putin's war, McQuade was stiil giving it a shot:
Putin perceives a clear and present danger from the leftist West – the "decadent" and corrosive abandonment of any and all traditional values.
From his perspective it would be like ignoring a fast-metastasizing cancer. Waiting was not an option.
Still, war is hell, and innocents are being brutally crushed in Ukraine as we go broke prolonging their suffering. The nightmare unfolds in living color 24/7, even if not materially different from ongoing conflicts in Africa that go uncovered by Western media.
But regardless of what we think of his war, shoring up Russia's autonomy and centuries-old cultural identity was a timely, now-or-never proposition for Putin, further painted into a corner with threats of regime change.
McQuade also peddled the not-aging-well claim that Putin's war of choice is somehow America's fault:
America's abject weakness and humiliating capitulation in Afghanistan wasn't lost on Putin. Nor was the sad fact that our sitting president is beholden to his family's benefactors to include Ukrainian oligarchs and the CCP. He also couldn't help but notice our dangerously divided nation with a generation of American-flag-loathing ideologues.
His timing was perfect. As it will be for China when it makes its long awaited move on Taiwan soon. America will then be forced to choose between multiple theaters of engagement, otherwise known as a "world war." Or as arrogant, globalist leftists like to think of it, "the Great Reset," a golden opportunity to instantly reduce population and war profiteer. Fallout shelters are being built for such nihilistic elitists as we speak.
McQuade concluded by declaring that the only thing that can save us is turning to his right-wing version of God:
Fellow Americans, we are down to a single saving hope to preserve our once "Nation Under God" as a free and prosperous land and force for good rather than evil: Revival. Otherwise, I'm sorry to say all bets are off. And our day of reckoning is closer than we think.
McQuade's bio describes him as having "founded cable channel Z Music Television, "The Positive Alternative" to MTV" -- which is to say, a failed cable channel that attempted to be the Christian version of MTV. The fact that he still insists on taking Russia's side in this war tells us that he's in need of a lot more than revival.
MRC's Jean-Pierre-Bashing, Doocy-Fluffing Watch Topic: Media Research Center
In his writeup of the Aug. 29 White House press briefing, Curtis Houck unsurprisingly cheered Peter Doocy's biased questions regarding pet MRC victim Novak Djokovic (which he dishonestly framed as "basic") to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, whom he yet again portrayed as an incompetent diversity hire:
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre had quite the Monday as, near the end of an otherwise lackluster briefing with little in the way of pressing exchanges, Fox’s Peter Doocy leveled some basic questions about a double standard on the border and the coronavirus that left Jean-Pierre spinning her wheels.
Having quipped that she “could have walked away” to end the briefing (as the AP’s Zeke Miller had given the hook) and Doocy’s plea that he’ll “make it worth it,” he started with simple premise in light of the U.S. Open getting underway: “How come migrants are allowed to come into this country unvaccinated but world-class tennis players are not?”
With Doocy having alluded to former world number one men’s tennis player Novak Dojokvic being unable to enter the U.S. because he’s unvaccinated, Jean-Pierre declined comment because “visa records are confidential under U.S. law” and the U.S. also can’t “comment on medical information of individual travelers.”
Jean-Pierre seemed to have thought she really threaded the needle by passing the buck to the CDC as their “requirement for foreign nationals,” but Doocy tired to keep her on subject by wondering why then can anyone walk across the southern border, regardless of their vaccination status (or any requirement for that matter).
Incredibly, Jean-Pierre claimed “that’s not how it works,” leaving an exasperated Doocy to fact-check her (click “expand”):
[...]
Representing anyone feeling incredulous after having listened to that excuse, he called out the spin: “I know that that’s not what you guys want to happen, but that is what happ— what is happening.”
Jean-Pierre made matter even worse for herself by replying that “it’s not like somebody walks over” before stammering and leaving Doocy with an opening to forcefully reply:
That’s exactly what’s happening. Thousands of people are walking in a day. Some of them turn themselves over. Some of them are caught; tens of thousands a week are not. That is what is happening.
The hapless White House official retreated to her binder with a lengthy answer about “what we have done under this administration” with “new border technology and set up joint protocols with Mexico and Guatemala” to target human traffickers and dole out “record levels of funding for the Department of Homeland Security.”
For the Aug. 31 briefing, it was more cookies for Doocy and Philip Wegmann for advancing right-wing narratives and criticizing non-right-wing reporters for not doing the same thing:
Ahead of President Biden’s Thursday night address set to call over 70 million people a national security threat because they vote Republican, Wednesday’s White House press briefing featured a robust defense by the press corps of such dangerous rhetoric while CBS’s Nancy Cordes and Real Clear Politics’s Philip Wegmann pushed back. On a separate topic, Fox’s Peter Doocy hammered the administration on how border policies exacerbate drug overdoses.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre laid the groundwork, telling the AP’s Chris Megerian that Biden believes half the country poses “an extremist threat to democracy,” “freedoms,” and “rights.” This left Reuters’s Jeff Mason to commence the softballs, asking whether Biden and his administration are “satisfied that FBI agents are getting the protection that they need as a result of these threats” by Republicans.
[...]
Real Clear Politics’s Philip Wegmann respectfully pushed back on this insanity, twice asking whether Biden’s talking about such a large swath of the country: “When it comes to voters, how does the President differentiate between the ultra-MAGA folks who he sees an extremist threat to democracy and the average GOP voter?”
Jean-Pierre insisted their problem is with “the MAGA Republicans in leadership,” but she changed her tune and broadened it out to “an extreme part of...the party” after he asked a follow-up: “So, for folks sitting at home, when the President is talking about preserving the soul of the nation and those threats to democracy, he's not referring to those individuals. He's talking about Republican leadership?”
Doocy took things in a different direction on Overdose Awareness Day: “There’s a big problem now that rainbow fentanyl, which is designed to target children, has been found in 18 states. What specifically is the President doing about this?”
Jean-Pierre insisted that, along with “observing” that day, she argued the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will spend $80 million on “drug prevention.”
Obviously, this didn’t fly with Doocy: “But 300 over doses a day now. We know how the fentanyl is coming into the country. It’s coming right across the southern border. The DEA administrator says so. So, when is the President going to do something more to stop this?”
Jean-Pierre boasted that it’s being addressed since there’s been “a 200 percent increase of fentanyl seizures,” but Doocy cut through with this devastating reality: “[L]ife expectancies are going down at a rate not seen in a century and part of that is being driven by drug overdoses, so what is the President going to do to stop this?”
Things got even worse after Jean-Pierre falsely claimed the Biden administration has been “securing the border” and giving “record levels of funding” to “DHS, so they can stop illicit drugs.”
The usually aggressive but even-keeled Doocy seemed to have had enough. Pathetically, Jean-Pierre argued it was offensive for Doocy to argue the administration wasn’t addressing this crisis[.]
Houck didn't mention that the decline in life expectancy began under President Trump, who apprently did not do enough to intercept fentanyl at the border, given how much more fentanyl has been seized under Biden than under Trump.
Houck obsessed further over a speech that hadn't yet been given in his writeup of the Sept 1 briefing:
On Thursday afternoon, White House reporters rallied from the embarrassing effort many gave the day prior in lobbying softballs to inept Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and showed skepticism that President Biden’s Thursday night address on how the American right poses a threat to the country wouldn’t be political.
Reuters’s Jeff Mason was one of those reporters who redeemed himself, starting with a short, Doocy-like question: “Is tonight a political speech?”
Jean-Pierre sowed her fate when she immediately show back:“No. It’s not a political speech. This is an opportunity — again for the President to directly have a conversation with the — with the — the American people.”
[...]
Giving away the game, Jean-Pierre snarked that “we understand we hit a nerve” with the American right “trying to hide and we understand that ultra-MAGA officeholders want to play games here and dodge accountability for their extreme proposals and actions, but they're just telling on themselves.”
She falsely added that Biden has “always squarely targeted his criticism on elected leaders” and he would continue to “not...shy away” from slamming them though Thursday’s “speech...will be optimistic.”
Salgado took over the mocking duties for the Sept. 2 briefing, whining heavily about the speech given by President Biden the night before calling out the danger MAGA Republicans pose to the country, and whining even harder that Doocy didn't get to ask a question. So Fondacaro was left to spout right-wing talking points about the speech in his stead:
In the wake of President Biden’s extremely divisive Thursday night speech featuring tinges of authoritarian themes, the Friday White House press briefing was noticeably lacking critical questions about the dangerous rhetoric in the address. And with Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre skipping over tough questioners like Fox News Channel’s Peter Doocy, the few questions that were asked about the speech only addressed how “political” it was and why they decided to use Marines as props.
[...]
Absent from the briefing room were critical questions about the optics of the President being wreathed in blood-red lights and inky shadows while waving his fists in the air as he claimed over 70 million Americans were a threat to the country and enemies of the state. Online, these optics drew comparisons to Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, V for Vendetta, The Hunger Games, the empire from Star Wars, and other popular media featuring authoritarian demagogues.
Diamond did dip into questions about the stagecraft of the speech, noting it “very much sounded like a politically charged speech as an official event” that was “taxpayer-funded, with two Marines in uniform, in particular, flanking him and visible on camera throughout his speech.”
“Denouncing political violence is not political. Defending rights and freedom is not political. Making clear the challenges facing the nation is not political. We don't call any of that political,” Jean-Pierre defended their arguably unethical actions.
Catherine Salgado did her own own version of mocking Jean-Pierre for a separate piece on the briefing:
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stuttered a refusal to answer a question about the Biden administration’s alleged collusion with Big Tech to censor Americans.
Fox Business Network White House correspondent Edward Lawrence asked Jean-Pierre on Sept. 2: “On social media companies, did the administration give Twitter and Facebook, ah, talking points, um, over flagging what the president describes as misinformation?”
Jean-Pierre asked Lawrence to repeat his question. Lawrence did, adding, “How much coordination is there between the administration, um, and social media companies?”
Jean-Pierre then stammered, “So, I–I–I don’t have anything to–to share with you on that, and I’m not going to comment on–on that right this time.”
Salgado went on to reference "Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt’s revelations Thursday of a vast 'censorship enterprise' between Big Tech platforms and the federal government in colluding to censor Americans’ free speech online," touting how the so-called investigation "cited original research from Media Research Center and its unique CensorTrack database to support its underlying allegations." She offered no reason why a biased investigation from a Republican attorney general that seems to be merely parroting right-wing talking points should be trusted.
CNS Unironically Accuses Biden Of Cherry-Picking Economic Numbers Topic: CNSNews.com
We'velongdocumented how CNSNews.com cherry-picks economic numbers -- particularly regarding employment, where it emphasizeas arcane numbers like the labor force participation rate in order to downplay drops in the overall employment rate -- to make Democratic presidents look bad. So it was more than a bit amusing to to see CNS uniroinbically accusing President Biden of cherry=picking numbers on the economy, as Craig Bannister did in an Aug. 10 article:
“Our economy had zero percent inflation in the month of July. Zero percent," President Joe Biden boasted Wednesday, citing a lesser-used Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) measure, rather than the more commonly used statistic, which shows inflation actually jumped 8.5%.
Pres. Biden led off a press event with the claim:
"Before I begin today, I want to say a word about the news that came out relative to the economy. Actually, I just want to say a number: zero. Today, we received news our economy had zero percent inflation in the month of July. Zero percent.
“Here’s what that means: while the price of some things went up last month, the price of other things went down by the same amount. The result: zero inflation last month. But, people are still hurting. But, zero inflation last month.”
And, yes, if you’re comparing the seasonally-adjusted change from June 2022 to July 2022 for “urban consumers,” that’s true, as the BLS report released Wednesday notes:
(CPI-U) was unchanged in July on a seasonally adjusted basis.”
However, the more broadly analyzed and reported inflation statistic is the year-to-year (July 2022 vs. July 2021) increase in inflation for “all items” – which rose 8.5% - as in the next sentence of its release:
Bannister then gushed that "Social media was quick call out Biden and post video of his disingenuous boast," though he cited only a single right-wing Republican senator doing so. He then went into the weeds by claiming that "Biden also appeared to conflate his 'zero percent inflation' statistic with the 'core inflation' number - which excludes price increases for food and energy products." Of course, doing so lets Bannister ignore that gas prices have been dropping throughout the summer, which CNS as a whole is trying to ignore.
WND's Root Is Rooting For Trump-DeSantis Ticket In '24 Topic: WorldNetDaily
Wayne Allyn Root started off his Aug. 6 WorldNetDaily column by gushing over a far-right election denier winning a Republican primary in Arizona:
Congratulations to Kari Lake and to the people of Arizona. Kari may very well be the best GOP candidate in America, and she will make the best governor Arizona ever had. If she is elected in November, I guarantee you we'll have fair and honest elections moving forward in Arizona. Which means in 2024, former President Donald Trump wins Arizona.
After Tuesday's GOP primaries, this is now 100% the Trump "America First" Republican Party. Trump won. Establishment RINOS lost. The D.C. swamp lost. The "deep state" lost. You won't hear that in the media.
Secondly, I love what Lake's victory represents. The media ignore the fact that the McCain brand is now finished in Arizona ... while the Bush brand is finished in Texas and Florida. Within days, the Cheney brand is finished in Wyoming. And although he isn't running this year, Sen. Mitt Romney is finished as well. I'm on vacation in Utah right now. Romney is the most hated Republican in the history of Utah. He will never run again.
All these famous Republicans have ruined their political careers and legacies with their insane "Trump Derangement Syndrome."
Of course, Root has reverse Trump Derangement Syndrome -- he can't stop slobbering over the immoral, corrupt liar. Root went on to describe his new Republican dream ticket for 2024:
I just sent out a poll to my 20,000-fan mailing list. I asked a simple question: Who do you support for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination? I gave no options. I just left it up to 20,000 people to tell me what they think.
Ninety-five percent picked Trump. Five percent picked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
What does my poll indicate? DeSantis is fantastic. He is the best governor in America. He is my personal favorite governor ever. But he will not be the GOP nominee in 2024. To say otherwise is pure fantasy.
Trump is the 2024 GOP nominee – PERIOD. An overwhelming percentage of Republican voters understand only one man can clean up Biden's disaster and put the U.S. economy back on track: Donald J. Trump.
There's a little hitch in his plan, though:
But there is a problem: Trump cannot run with DeSantis. DeSantis is disqualified by the rules of the Electoral College. As I understand it, two candidates cannot run from the same state, or your ticket loses the electoral votes of that state (for either president or VP). No Republican can ever afford to give up the valuable electoral votes of Florida.
No one seems to know this. So, I'm making sure everyone knows this problem before they are shocked and disappointed. Trump is precluded by the rules of the Electoral College from running with DeSantis.
Unless ...
Trump gives up his Florida residency. Which is easy, but costly. If Trump registers to vote in New Jersey, everything changes. Yes, Trump's income taxes will go way up, but if Trump switches his legal residency from Mar-a-Lago to Bedminster, his New Jersey mansion and golf club, we all get the 2024 dream ticket of Trump-DeSantis.
Not only do we win the election with the perfect ticket to supercharge the economy and save us from COVID-19 insanity forevermore (no more masks, vaccine mandates or lockdowns), along with four more years of Trump dismantling the D.C. swamp, but we set up eight years of President Ron DeSantis from 2028 to 2036.
So, there's the solution. If we all want Trump-DeSantis, that's the only way to make it happen and save the nation we all love.
Actually, Biden is doing a fine job of saving the country from the degredations of the Trump years.
The Media Research Center has spent the past few years suffering a collective outbreak of Hunter Biden Derangement Syndrome, which focused largely on the the contents of Hunter's laptop, which the MRC repeatedly whined wasn't covered before the 2020 election even though its its pro-Trump promoters never offered independent verification of it at the time. 
WorldNetDaily's Art Moore wrote in an Aug. 18 
Earlier this year, WorldNetDaily columnist Jerry Newcombe 
In an about-face from 
The Media Research Center has done 
CNS editor Terry Jeffrey's 
The Media Research Center 
In a 2012 Media Research Center 
After the FBI search of Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, CNSNews.com 
The Media Research Center's Tierin-Rose Mandelburg unironically wrote in a July 26 
Several WorldNetDaily columnists 
In his writeup of the Aug. 29 White House 
We've
Wayne Allyn Root started off his Aug. 6 WorldNetDaily 
