MRC Continued to Exploit Fetterman's Stroke For Oz's Gain
Topic: Media Research Center

We've shown how the Media Research Center held off on attacking Democratic Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman until it decided that his stroke could be exploited as a partisan issue to help his Republican opponent, Mehmet Oz. Curtis Houck spent an Oct. 17 post, headlined "CLOWN SHOW," coimplaining that a Philadelphia newspaper endorsed Fetterman over Oz, despite the former being "mentally and physically incapacitated":

Major newspapers are prone to endorse Democrats. It’s almost as predictable as Joe Biden liking ice cream or Donald Trump posting on social media. 

But one published Sunday in The Philadelphia Inquirer caught our eye, as while it wasn’t surprising that they endorsed the mentally and physically incapacitated Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) for Senate, but rather how they ironically claimed that it’s Fetterman’s opponent, Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz, who’s the “wholly unprepared” person to assume office.

The subhead was comical: “The Republican nominee, Mehmet Oz, is wholly unprepared to be the commonwealth’s U.S. senator.”

[...]

Only two paragraphs in the middle were spent on his stroke and, predictably, the paper dismissed concerns and argued it “should not be inherently disqualifying” as sitting Senate Democrats Ben Ray Lujan (NM) and Chris Van Hollen (MD) have recently suffered strokes.

“There is no reason Fetterman cannot serve effectively after his stroke. Fetterman said that one of the most significant challenges of his recovery involves auditory processing — a condition in which his comprehension of certain words and phrases is occasionally delayed,” they argued.

Adding that it only took him “a few seconds to ensure that he has understood a questioner correctly” and then a few “more to collect his thoughts and find the right words,” the left-wing rag insisted such a level of incapacity won’t keep him from “know[ing] what his values are and...communicating them.”

Houck huffed in an Oct. 20 post that one TV segment "wrapped on the Pennsylvania Senate race and ignored Lt. Gov. John Fetterman’s (D-PA) mental incapacity."

Clay Waters played a bizarre round of whataboutism in an Oct. 21 post comparing Fetterman to ... Herschel Walker?

The New York Times drips with understanding when it comes to the health problems plaguing Pennsylvania Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman, but their sympathy turns to snideness when it comes to the dissociative identity disorder diagnosis of Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg’s Friday edition story on Walker, a football legend, appeared under this snide headline: “Walker Says He Has ‘Overcome’ Mental Illness, but It’s Not So Simple, Experts Say.”

Stolberg seemed to hint that Walker was using his mental illness as a convenient excuse.

[...]

The problem is that when the impaired Democrat Fetterman faced questions, the media, including the Times, circled the wagons in his defense. Some outlets even went after mainstream media reporters who dared question Fetterman’s fitness for office.

The same paper that pushes “Long COVID” and demands surgery for “transgender” teens to cure gender dysphoria has suddenly recovered its skepticism about medical disorders.

Waters didn't mention how his employer, along woith the rest of the right-wing media, circled their wagons around Walker after he was credibily accused of paying for an abortion.

(Bill D'Agostino similarly complained that "the media eagerly flooded the airwaves with the latest tidbits about Walker’s scandal, they have been incredibly protective of another embattled Senate candidate: John Fetterman, who’s running as a Democrat in Pennsylvania.")

Rich Noyes spent an Oct. 21 post noting that "Alone among the three broadcast morning shows, only ABC’s Good Morning America covered President Biden’s campaign appearance with Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman in Pennsylvania on Thursday, and correspondent Rachel Scott admitted the President is unpopular with voters and unwanted by most Democratic candidates," grumbling that "while ABC at least talked about the President’s problems, Scott neglected to mention Fetterman’s ongoing health problems which have put the race in peril for Democrats, and showed no clips of Fetterman speaking."

Houck returned to claim in an Oct. 25 post that CBS is trying to "pull Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) across the finish line" (you know, like how the MRC is trying to pull Walker across the finish line):

Just as the liberal broadcast networks tried to keep former Gov. Charlie Crist’s (D-FL) campaign afloat, CBS Mornings did its best to pull Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) across the finish line in his close race against Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz. Thanks to chief campaign and election correspondent Robert Costa, CBS had one simple message for voters weighing Fetterman’s health in their vote: let it go.

Costa spent the second half of his piece on Fetterman’s health, leading with a clip of the mentally and physically limited Fetterman stammering his way through one of his rare stump speeches.

[...]

Costa added that “Fetterman’s use of a captioning device will be on display during the debate” and posed the question to passerby’s in State College, Pennsylvania this past weekend.

After one person said no one “should be shamed for using things that makes things more accessible” and another seemed indifferent, Costa brought in an expert from the left-wing Poynter and cited a CBS News poll to argue alleged talk about issues with Fetterman’s health need to end[.]

This was all setup before a debate between Fetterman and Oz, which the MRC exploited too. More on that soon.

Newsmax's Favorite Right-Wing Pollsters Push Narrative Of Red Wave
Topic: Newsmax

Newsmax loves right-wing pollsters John and Jim McLaughlin so much -- they also served as pollsters for Donald Trump's 2020 re-election campsign -- that they have their own column at Newsmax. And they're so biased that they offer advice to Republicans on how to message so they poll better. In their Aug. 29 column, for example, they huffed:

Shouldn’t the Republicans be challenging the Democrats on the future of America? Do we really want to allow the Joe Biden big government socialists to continue to transform America?

[...]

Why did the Republicans allow President Biden a vacation from the campaign?

Why are they allowing the Democrats in Congress who voted for his failed agenda to hide those votes? September needs to be the month where Republicans aggressively challenge the Biden big government socialists on inflation and higher prices.

[...]

If the Republicans want to regain majorities in Congress, it’s time to follow President Trump’s example and play offense against the Biden Democrats.

The McLaughlins' Sept. 28 column hyped their own midterm polling that "Republicans seem to have an edge, but — the trends are mixed." They then displayed their bias -- and, thus, their lack of credibility -- for all to see by openly rooting for Republicans and offering them advice on how to win:

GOP opposition leaders need to make a more effective case, that the U.S. is on the wrong track and that it's President Joseph Robinette Biden’s fault!

Biden needs to be on the ballot — not Trump as the Democrats would like project.

Biden is the president. Biden is on the ballot, and our nation's condition is Biden’s fault.

There’s still plenty of public sentiment that Republicans can make that case.

[...]

The 2022 midterm madness is upon us.

Everyday counts.

The Biden big government socialists are fighting for their majorities. The Republicans must fight to take them away and restore America to the right direction. 41 days.

Should anyone who's not a rabid right-winger trust anything the McLaughlins do as being credible or trustworhy after that rant? Probably not. On the other hand, the Media Research Center bought a McLaughlin to try and prove its own version of Trump's Big Lie about election fraud.

The McLaughlins, unsurprisingly, also receive airtime on Newsmax TV and on the Newsmax website to promote the narrative that Republicans are trouncing Democrats in the runup to the midterm elections. Here's a sampling of the promotion the McLaughlins have gotten just in the past month or so:

• GOP Must Fight to Take Away Biden's Big Gov't Socialism in Midterms
• McLaughlin to Newsmax: Issues, Not Biden's Flubs, Will Decide Fall Vote
• McLaughlin to Newsmax: Major Pollsters 'Trying to Drive Down Republican Support'
• John McLaughlin to Newsmax: Republicans Have 'Momentum'
• Pollster McLaughlin to Newsmax: Dems' 'Candidate Quality' Led to Ducked Debates
• McLaughlin to Newsmax: Polling Puts GOP Ahead in Key Races in Arizona, Georgia
• Pollster Jim McLaughlin to Newsmax: All About Inflation, Crime

OIthers have noted this sort of right-wing pol-hyping, done in an attempt to flood the zone and create the perception of a "red wave" for the midterms. Democratic adviser Simon Rosenburg has noted this flood-the-zone strategy, which obscures that there are polls that show Democratic candidates doing well, as has MSNBC host Joy Reid.Newsmax didn't like that story, and neither did the McLaughlins. Thus, Jim McLaughlin made a Nov. 2 Newsmax TV appearance to lamely play whataboutism:

Pollster Jim McLaughlin, pushing back at a report from MSNBC host Joy Reid that Republican pollsters are inflating polls in favor of GOP candidates, said Wednesday on Newsmax that left-leaning media organizations and universities are the ones who are skewing the polls by including fewer Republicans. 

"This is the typical example of the left, accusing Republicans of what the left is doing," McLaughlin said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "You are still seeing a lot of these national polls right now done by the media and these colleges and universities where Republicans are only represented in their surveys by about a quarter of the vote."

Earlier this week, Reid said on her program, "The ReidOut," that polls suggesting GOP candidates are surging ahead were part of an "insidious and seemingly intentional campaign from Republican-backed polling firms to flood the zone and tip the balance of polling averages in favor of their candidates, to create a narrative that Republicans are surging and that a red wave is imminent and inevitable."

But McLaughlin noted, for example, that an Emerson College poll scored Rep. Lee Zeldin, the GOP nominee in the New York governor's race, down by 8 percentage points against Democrat incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul. 

"The problem is with the survey again," said McLaughlin. "They oversampled Democrats at about 53% and undersampled Republicans at only about 23% or 24%."

Not only did writer Sandy Fitzgterald not disclose the McLaughlins' right-wing bias, she gave McLaughlin a platform to display that bias again:

McLaughlin also commented on President Joe Biden's speech in Florida, where he referred to Republicans as extremists. 

"The truth of the matter is, it's the Democrats who are the extremists," said McLaughlin. "They've spent $6 trillion we didn't have that cause this crazy inflation. They're not even getting hit on all these tax increases in the Inflation Reduction Act. These are the same folks that have given us open borders."

Again: Not the guy anyone who's not a right-wing ideologue should trust with their polling.

WND Spreads COVID Vaccine Misinfo, Florida Man Division
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Art Moore, WorldNetDaily's leader in spreading falsehoods and misinformation about COVID treatments and vaccines, gets some help from a Florida man in an Oct. 10 article:

Breaking ranks with the CDC, Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo is urging men aged 18 to 39 not to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

In a tweet censored by Twitter, Ladapo cited a Florida Department of Health analysis that found the mRNA jabs raise the risk of cardiac-related death by 84% in young males.

[...]

In March, Ladapo announced the state had become the first to recommend against vaccinating healthy children for COVID-19. The announcement came at the end of an 85-minute roundtable of epidemiologists and other medical scientists hosted by DeSantis titled "The Curtain Close on COVID Theater." The governor posed questions regarding the effectiveness of the vaccines in reducing infection and transmission as well as the crucial issue of safety. Among the participants were Drs. Robert Malone, Harvey Risch of Yale, Jay Battacharya of Stanford, Sunetra Gupta of Oxford and Martin Kulldorf, formerly of Harvard.

The new Florida Department of Health analysis analysis was criticized by some scientists, but Ladapo countered Monday on Twitter with a point-by-point rebuttal.

The surgeon general said he welcomed the debate.

"Isn't it great when we discuss science transparently instead of trying to cancel one another?" he wrote on Twitter.

Except that few of the "rebuttal" points Ladapo issued, as copy-and-pasted by Moore, addressed the many issues legitimate medical professionals have identified with the study -- starting with the fact that it was anonymously written, unlike virtually every other research study in exixtence. As a media outlet that cares about honest reporting detailed:

More than a dozen experts interviewed by The Washington Post — including specialists in vaccines, patient safety and study design — listed concerns with Florida’s analysis, saying it relies on information gleaned from frequently inaccurate death certificates rather than medical records, skews the results by trying to exclude anyone with covid-19 or a covid-related death, and draws conclusions from a total of 20 cardiac-related deaths in men 18 to 39 that occurred within four weeks of vaccination. Experts noted the deaths might have been caused by other factors, including underlying illnesses or undetected covid.

“We’re talking about a very small number of deaths. An extra death or two would potentially change these results,” said Robert Wachter, chair of the department of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco and co-author of a patient-safety textbook used in many medical schools. “I’m hesitant to even call it a paper; it isn’t published anywhere. The idea that [the analysis] … is being used to change policy — it does not have the scientific chops to do that.”

“If you submitted that to a peer-reviewed journal, unless you were paying them to publish it, it would get rejected,” added Daniel Salmon, who leads the Institute of Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “Putting out half-baked reports from a department of health is a dangerous thing to do.”

By contrast, Moore talked to no experts and merely regurgitated Ladapo's claims about the study without bothering to fact-check anything he said. He did, however, admit the study has not been peer-reviewed, so he gets a brownie point for that. He also added a video of an interview Ladapo did on Steve Bannon's far-right webcast "War Room: Pandemic," which also does not inspire confidence in anything Ladapo has to say. Not that Moore will tell you any of that, of course; his job is to fearmonger and misinform, not report honestly.

NEW ARTICLE: The MRC's Double Standard on Political Donations
Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center doesn't like it when people's financial contributions to right-wing causes are exposed -- even though it regularly exposes the donations liberals (and not just George Soros) make to their favorite causes. Read more >>

MRC Obsesses Over Biden Gaffe
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center M.O. is to cherry-pick an issue (or follow orders to cherry-pick one), flood the zone with outraged posts about it, with the goal of forcing the story up the right-wing media food chain -- a ploy that usually works, given how slavishly devoted people in the right-wing bubble are to regurgitating established narratives.

And so it is with President Biden's gaffe of calling on a congresswoman for recognition who had died a few months before. We've noted the MRC's Curtis Houck berating White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre for doing her job in taking questions "after President Joe Biden called out to Congresswoman Jackie Walorski (R-IN) at a global hunger event despite the fact that Walorski died nearly two months ago" and being mad that she wasn't furthering the right-wing narrative that the gaffe was "a sign of cognitive decline."

Because the MRC (or whatever shady Right-Wing Narrative Production Office that dictates what the MRC must cover) decided this was a story that could be exploited by pushing the narrative that he's mentally incapacitated, this was just the beginning. A Sept. 28 item by Kevin Tober pushed the usual the-non-right-wing-media-aren't covering-this-story-that-advances-our-narrative angle (but praising Fox News, of course, for sticking to the narrative):

On Wednesday, President Joe Biden proved once again he's not mentally with us anymore when he called out for Congresswoman Jackie Walorski (R-IN) during a speech on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health despite the fact that Walorski died in a car crash in August. While Biden may not be capable of remembering events that far back, we know he was notified of her death since he and the First Lady both put out a statement and lowered the American flag in her honor when she passed along with two staffers. 

All three evening newscasts ignored the latest gaffe from our apparently senile President and instead focused on a reported Methane spill in the Baltic Sea (CBS Evening News), and Katie Couric's cancer diagnosis (ABC's World News Tonight). meanwhile, NBC spent the entire half hour of NBC Nightly News covering Hurricane Ian. 

During Fox News Channel's Special Report White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich covered Biden's latest gaffe and the subsequent firestorm at the White House press briefing on whether Biden even remembered that Walorski died.

[...]

The terrible combination of Joe Biden's almost daily gaffes and Karine Jean-Pierre's stunning inability to put together a coherent sentence makes it obvious why the leftist news networks have no interest in covering the administration's never-ending list of incompetence and failures. 

That was followed by Alex Christy praising Trevor Noah of "The Daily Show" for noting "Biden’s latest moment of indignity" and whacking other late-night hosts for not doing so.Scott Whitlock quickly followed that with another lack-of-coverage-of-our-narrative post headlined "Biden Gaffe Watch Day #2":

As we noted on Wednesday night, the networks avoided the cringe-inducing moment when the President asked where a recently deceased Congresswoman was, wondering of Jackie Walorski: “Jackie, are you here? Where’s Jackie?” All three evening newscasts censored the President’s latest awkward moment.  

How about Thursday? Despite an available six hours of air time, ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS Mornings and NBC’s Today all avoided it as well. But what about Hurricane Ian threatening Florida, you might ask? Would there be time? The networks rightly offered detailed coverage on this dangerous storm and all who were impacted by it.

But there was still time to cover Biden’s latest example of being confused in public. For instance, ABC’s Good Morning America managed to devote five minutes and six seconds to Hocus Pocus 2. Sounding like a commercial for his Disney overlords, co-host George Stephanopoulos enthused that the original has “come to define Halloween for a generation of kids and their parents.” Shilling for his corporate parent, he reminded, “[Hocus Pocus 2] starts streaming tomorrow on Disney+!” 

At least Whitlock managed to restrain himself from (hypocritically) calling ABC "whores" for promoting Disney content.

Curtis Houck tried to mix in another narrative to Biden's "mental flatulence" regarding Vice P{resident Kamala Harris misspeaking, whining that "Naturally, the broadcast networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC all ignored this story despite the fact that all three had at least three segments of other stories not related to the devastation caused in Florida by Hurricane Ian."

Nicholas Fondacaro lashed out at "The View," as he is wont to do, for calling out the MRC-pushed anti-Biden narrative:

President Biden’s cognitive decline was catapulted into the spotlight on Wednesday after he called out for a member of Congress that had been dead for nearly two months, with White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre getting grilled by the liberal likes of the Washington Post and ABC. But ABC’s The View was in full gaslight mode Thursday as they suggested the questions were attacks launched by the “right-wing” media trying to “weaponize” Biden’s “brain fart” because America was evil and “ageist.”

[...]

Co-host Sara Haines also spoke out in Biden’s defense claiming he had a “brain fart” or “mommy brain” moment and tried to blame Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre for how badly it went over:

I think her explanation made it worse though because in that moment, I probably would have just said, “Okay, guys. He had a moment. Who in this room hasn't?” And then just move on. The fact she kept kind of repeating the same words –

Behar interjected to defend Jean-Pierre, suggesting she was dealing with hostile media that “has weaponized his gaffes!” “I mean, they have weaponized the gaffes, They’ve said that he’s senile,” she raged.

[...]

According to [Alyssa] Farah Griffin, Biden’s constant mental slips weren’t a cause for concern but they were instead “endearing.” And she too thought Jean-Pierre was the problem:“The cover-up was worse than the crime.”

Farah Griffin also used the incident to pose the question to the table: “Do you think Joe Biden is the strongest candidate to beat Donald Trump in 2024?” “If this is any indication, I do,” Goldberg proclaimed.

Tim Graham devoted a Sept. 30 post to complaining that a non-right-wing writer wasn't parroting the MRC's right-wing spin by parrotingh a fellow member of his right-wing bubble:

John Sexton at Hot Air identified some terrible spin trying to defend Biden forgetting Rep. Jackie Walorski is dead. USA Today columnist Jill Lawrence, a longtime political reporter and a former editor of the paper's Commentary section, suggested the memory lapse demonstrated Biden's decency, unlike Trump.

[...]

The headline in Friday's paper is "President's lapse says volumes about his generosity: Biden recognizes his 'duty to care' for all."  Barf. 

Yes, Graham's slavish devotion to his narratives is quite barf-worthy. Indeed, later that day, he devoted his podcast to rehashing the MRC's narrative thus far as "a week of Biden-Harris gaffes -- and the media energetically ignoring Biden-Harris gaffes."

Tober returned for an Oct. 2 post of more whining that right-wing narratives weren't being parroted in non-right-wing media:

On Sunday’s NBC Meet the Press, anchor Chuck Todd excused the latest example of President Biden’s mental incapacity when this week he called out for Congresswoman Jackie Walorski (R-IN) at an event, despite the fact that she died in a car accident a month prior. According to Todd, it wasn’t a big deal because “people make mistakes.” 

[...]

Illustrating that she’s nothing but a Biden apologist, [Symone] Sanders-Townsend advised everyone “just acknowledge he had a slip of the tongue, move on, it's unfortunate, again, life is here. He understands, and empathizes,” adding “that's what’s most important here.” 

Instead of pushing back and saying this shows Biden has serious cognitive issues, Todd agreed with Sanders-Townsend that “people make mistakes and you try to go from there.” 

A mistake would be forgetting someone’s name for a split second or something similar. Forgetting that a member of Congress died in a well publicized car crash isn’t a mistake. It is yet another long list of evidence of Biden’s rapidly declining brain function. 

Chuck Todd is only fooling himself.

Graham whined the next day: "On Sunday'sMediaBuzz on Fox News, host Howard Kurtz discussed President Biden's Jackie gaffe with Brian Kilmeade and Democrat strategist Laura Fink. Kurtz underlined CNN and MSNBC completely ignored the gaffe, but Fink claimed ABC, CBS, and NBC all covered it. That is false." Mark Finkelstein took his shot at advancing the narrative in an Oct. 4 post complaining that "Morning Joe" didn't advance his preferred narrative.

That makes 11 posts over a seven-day period, with at least one post every day but one -- and the MRC still wasn't done. Graham devoted his Oct. 7 column to complaining that his anti-Biden nbarrative wasn't followed, and then oddly played Trump whataboutism:

By now, everyone who follows politics should recognize that the liberal media will deliberately ignore embarrassing gaffes by Joe Biden, especially if they suggest he’s not mentally sharp enough to be the president. Biden asking “Where’s Jackie?” about a congresswoman killed in a car crash two months ago was a TV black hole: nothing on the morning and evening newscasts on ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS, and nothing on CNN or MSNBC.

This week offered a tidy contrast, and an inevitable reminder that these same networks can never stop obsessing over Trump tweets – even after he was banned by Twitter.

The taxpayer-funded PBS NewsHour took after Trump on Monday in a segment with two liberal political pundits – NPR’s Hillary-coddling reporter Tamara Keith and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report.

PBS White House reporter Laura Barron Lopez read from a Trump post on “Truth Social,” his Twitter imitation, where he said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “has a death wish and must immediately seek help and advice from his China-loving wife, Coco Chow.” This mysterious outburst is referring to Elaine Chao, who Trump named his Secretary of Transportation.

Lopez added: “Today, Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney said that rhetoric like that could cause violence. She also called it racist. But the vast majority of Republicans have not condemned this. So, Tamara, what does this silence among the GOP say about the party today?”

Rather than admit the simple fact that Trump is being kinda racist -- and, thus, have to explain why he and the rest of the MRC  still remains a devoted supporter of such a vile man -- Graham attacked PBS for bringing it up, huffing that "PBS is always making sure Trump’s trash talk is in the news, and Biden babbling like he’s lost a marble or two is spiked." Of course, Graham would never have mentioned Trump's sleazy remark at all if he couldn't play whataboutism with it. But he's also making a hollow and hypocritical criticism, given that the MRC runs a highly biased "news" division, CNSNews.com, that completely censored the "Coco Chow" story and any other story that reflects badly on Republicans, such as the Herschel Walker abortion scandal.

WND's Farah: Atonement For Thee, But Not For Me
Topic: WorldNetDaily

As he occasionally does, WorldNetDaily editor Jioseph Farah has called for a day of atonement -- and, as usual, Farah doesn't include himself among those who need to atone. Farah called for it again in his Oct. 4 column, though with a less partisan bent than previous attempts:

They call it a Jewish holiday – Yom Kippur.

It's the Day of Atonement, all right, but it's not just for practicing Jews. As Leviticus 23 makes clear, today is not a Jewish holiday, it's one of the feasts of the LORD.

In other words, it's for everyone who believes the Bible and in the One True God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – and Jesus.

Christians should especially find it appealing, since they believe in the forgiveness of sins by the one they consider to be the "Jewish Messiah."

[...]

My family will fast and pray just like Jews around the world and more and more Christians who are rediscovering the Hebrew roots of their faith.

As in previous years, we're pretty certain he will never atone for all the lies and misinformation his WND has published over the past 25 years, and which he continues to spread.There's also the atoning for the rift he created with his daughter, Alyssa Farah Griffin, because she escaped the Trump cult and he refuses to. You'd think that would have shaken a man who wants us to believe family is important to him, but he's apparently content with -- and utterly unrepentant for -- tearing his family apart over politics.

This much rank dishonesty and bah behavior would take much more than a day to atone for, but Farah is silent on those sins, instead offering lip service to how, supposedly, his family "will fast and pray just like Jews around the world." Instead, he lectured (well, copied-and-pasted from his 2021 column):

We are a nation in moral free fall.

We've lost our ability to discern right from wrong.

We don't even accept that there is such a thing as sin anymore. Sinners, we're told, are just those practicing alternate lifestyles.

But this can't go on forever – just as it couldn't go on forever in ancient Israel when the nation went adrift.

God is longsuffering because He loves us. But like any good parent, He will not enable His children forever. He will discipline them in an attempt to bring them back to His authority – not wishing any should perish.

Yet it appears Farah will never offer any genuine atonement for his behavior until he nears, or passes, the point of no return (and maybe not even then). But if becoming estranged from his own daughter and WND living perpetually on the brink of extinction hasn't caused him to reach that point, what will?

Newsmax's Kessler Bolsters Conspiracy Theory That Mar-a-Lago Was Bugged
Topic: Newsmax

The fact that there's no evidence whatsoever that federal agents planted bugs at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago compound hasn't kept right-wingers from floating that possibility (with help from Newsmax, of course). And loyal Trump-fluffer Ronald Kessler -- he's one of the folks who planted the idea of Trump running for president way back in 2011 -- is more than happy to play along to help further Trump's victim narrative. Kessler's Sept. 29 Newsmax column doesn't actually accuse the feds of bugging Mar-a-Lago; instead, he explains how it could be done if they did it:

Despite the corruption that occurred at the top levels of the bureau under FBI Director James Comey, the FBI has gotten incredibly good at outsmarting its criminal and foreign intelligence targets.

A prime example is the FBI’s Tactical Surveillance (TacOps) unit that plants bugging devices and surveillance cameras in the homes, offices, yachts, or airplanes of Mafia targets, corrupt politicians, foreign and domestic terrorists, foreign intelligence officers, and white collar criminals as well as in foreign embassies in the U.S.

In any given year, TacOps conducts as many as 400 of what the FBI calls covert entries, each authorized by court order and each requiring meticulous planning and ingenious cover stories.

Former President Trump’s team has claimed that FBI may have planted listening devices when conducting a search of Mar-a-Lago. But the truth is TacOps’ techniques are so sophisticated that no one would know if the FBI bugged Mar-a-Lago.

The rest of Kessler's column ins a painstaking explanation of how TacOps works. He wouldn't admit, however, that there's no actual evidence that Mar-a-Lago was bugged by the feds, nor did he disclose his closeness to Trump.

Shocker: CNS Managing Editor Writes Articles Critical of Israel, Jewish Extremists
Topic: CNSNews.com

As a loyally biased right-wing media outlet, CNSNews.com typically adheres to the accepted narrative aggressively defending Israel -- witness its hearty embrace of a group of far-right, replacement theory-believing rabbis. But an odd (for right-wing media) thing has happened over the past few months: CNS has published articles critical of Israel and far-right Jewish extremists. And thje source is even more surprising: managing editor Michael W. Chapman. He has written the usual pro-Israel like these, particularly regarding the killing of American-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was likely killed by Israeli soldiers:

• Traditional Rabbis Reject Liberal Jews' Claims That Ending Roe Will Stifle Practice of Judaism
• Soros Donates $1 Million to Liberal J Street Super PAC
• Israel's Mossad Leader: Iran Nuclear Deal is 'Based on Lies ... It's Fraud'
• Israel's Netanyahu: If We Send Weapons to Ukraine, They Could End Up in Iran Facing Us

But Chapman has written other articles surprisingly critical of far-right Jewish extremists. A July 25 article noted:

During his trip to Israel last week, President Joe Biden met with Theophilos III, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, who alerted him to "unprecedented attacks by Israeli radical groups" against Christians in the Holy City, which is all designed "to create an environment that repels Christians from their own city of Jerusalem," reported the office of the patriarch.

"Patriarch Theophilos III stressed the need for an active American intervention to protect the Christian heritage and presence in the Holy Land, especially in the city of Jerusalem, which is witnessing unprecedented attacks by Israeli radical groups, that conduct their offenses without accountability in order to create an environment that repels Christians from their own city of Jerusalem," stated the patriarch's office.

Chapman wrote an Aug. 4 article highlighting an attack on a non-Jewish woman by ultra-orthodox Jews:

Ultra-Orthodox Jews verbally and physically assaulted a gentile woman for sitting at the front of a public bus in Jerusalem on July 31, apparently in an attempt to enforce a modesty dress code that they follow in the Haredi community, reported Haaretz and Ynet, two major news outlets in Israel. 

The woman told Ynet that she regularly rides the bus (Kavim company) between Jerusalem and the ultra-Orthodox city of Elad. "On the way home, a group of 20 guys got on the bus, and decided that it didn't suit them that I was sitting in the front,” she said.

She added that she gets nauseous and sometimes vomits if she sits in the back of the bus. 

"When she declined to move, the men began verbally berating her, using a pejorative term for a gentile woman, and when she still refused to leave her seat began physically assaulting her," reported Haaretz.

[...]

According to Harretz, "such incidents are not uncommon, especially in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods."

In June, a 13-year-old girl was stopped from riding a bus in northern Israel "because of how she was dressed," said Haaretz. 

In another case from 2020, a woman was awarded $44,000 "in damages after a bus driver refused to let her board at a bus stop in a religious West Bank settlement because she was wearing shorts."

A Sept. 30 article by Chapman noted Israel's lack of support for Ukraine following its invasion by Russia:

In a recent interview, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky complained that the Israeli government had given his country no real military aid, such as missile defense systems, in its ongoing battle against Russia. 

“Israel gave us nothing. Nothing, zero,” Zelensky told France’s TV5Monde, as reported in The Times of Israel. “I understand they are in a difficult situation with Syria, with Russia.”

Israel has provided Ukraine with at least 2,000 helmets and 500 flak jackets, as well as tons of humanitarian aid, but has not provided defensive weapons.

Given that Israel is a Jewish state and Zelensky himself is Jewish, the Ukrainian president expressed surprise over the situation in the interview.

[...]

The refusal by Israel to provide weapons to Ukraine, according to The Times of Israel, "is seen as an attempt by Jerusalem to maintain working ties with Moscow, due to Russia’s control of Syrian air space, where Israel’s air force has carried out hundreds of sorties against alleged Iranian arms shipments and in order to keep groups backed by Tehran from establishing a foothold."

An Oct. 12 article by Chapman is the kind of article that gives people like Bill Donohue nightmares:

A new report out of Israel shows that the rate of sexual abuse is higher among students who attend schools in the national religious education system.

"Children who attend religious schools in Israel are more than twice as likely to experience sexual abuse, according to a stunning new report from a liberal Orthodox organisation published on Sunday [Oct. 2]," reported The Jewish Chronicle. 

Data on the abuse were collected from Israel's Welfare Ministry and the Central Bureau of Statistics, and were analyzed by the Ne’emanei Torah Va’Avodah Movement, a nonprofit educational research group in Jerusalem.

The numbers show that in Israel's national education system, the rate of sexual abuse is 1.04 per 1,000 students. In the haredi (strictly Orthodox) system, the rate was 1.98 per 1,000 students, nearly double the national rate. And in the  national-religious educational system the rate was 2.39.

Again, one does not normally find this kind of content on a right-wing "news" site. Is Chapman doing an experiment to see if CNS can transition into a (gasp!) fair and balanced media operation? We shall see.

MRC Defends Right-Wing Radio Host For Crude, Cynical Defense of Walker's Abortion
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's aggressive defense of Herschel Walker over his abortion scandal even extended to defending a right-wing radio host's crude, cynical defense of him.

When the co-hosts of "The View' called out the hypocrisy of right-wing radio host Dana Loesch in claiming that "I don't care if Herschel walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles. I want control of the Senate," smearing the woman Walker paid to have an abortion as a "skank," and smearing all women who have an abortion as "skanks," Nicholas Fondacaro used an Oct. 5 post to generously frame her cynical, hateful remarks as "reject[ing] liberal attempts to suppress Republican turnout/support for Walker with the scandal," hitting all the usual deflection points like trying to baselessly dismiss the story as somehow not true because it came from the Daily Beast, which he described without evidence as "left-wing":

Wednesday was day two of ABC’s The View obsessing over the salacious claims made by the left-wing Daily Beast against Georgia Senate nominee Herschel Walker (R) that he paid for a woman’s abortion back in 2009. On this second day, the cackling coven hyperventilated about conservative radio host Dana Loesch and how she rejected liberal attempts to suppress Republican turnout/support for Walker with the scandal. Loesch herself responded to NewsBusters reporting and blasted the ladies who were attacking her with vile suggestions.

[...]

“First of all, ma'am, there's a lot of women who find themselves in a position of having to have an abortion. How dare you call them ‘skanks,’ first of all,” Goldberg (who has had an abortion and tried to pressure her daughter into one too) sneered. “I'm keeping calling you a name out of my mouth ‘cause it's not the right thing to do.”

Loesch responded to Goldberg on Twitter (throwing her own words back at her), saying, “FIRST OF ALL, @WhoopiGoldberg -- I refuse to coddle or celebrate irresponsible women who use abortion as birth control. I'm right, so get over it. That you're angrier over that than murder speaks volumes about your character.”

As is de rigeur for Fondacaro, he lashed out at co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin for not agreeing with Loesch that women who have an abortion are "skanks":

Up next was faux Republican Alyssa Farah Griffin to bloviate about what was happening to “my party” and suggested Loesch was a manifestation of “the moral rot that’s taking over.”

“I can't defend that for a second. As a pro-life woman to hear someone else like Dana who is pro-life call women who get into situations where they need abortions ‘skanks’ is just shameful,” she proclaimed.

Loesch had something to say to Farah Griffin too:

That "something was a rant calling aboriton "murder" and defending her sleazy insult of woman "an honest description of females who use abortion as birth control ."

Later that day, Tim Graham devoted his podcast to rehashing "The View" vs. Loesch, with help from Fondacaro, who laughably described Loesch's crude insult of women as "blunt, inartful language" -- which, of course, neither Graham nor Fondacaro criticized; Graham instead defended her as "trying to get some attention." Fondacaro then sounded like a Walker flack in baselessly arguing that he deserves a pass because the abortion Walker paid for happened in 2009 and "people's hearts change. I know stories of women who have had abortion and then they've been wracked with guilt over it and become pro-life." Fondacaro offered no evidence that Walker himself feels that way.

Both Graham and Fondacaro predictably trashed Farah Griffin as purportedly being a "liberal Democrat" for leaving the Trump cult and not being a dogmatic conservative -- then, without any sense of irony, attacked "The View" co-hosts for doing the same exact thing: "Anybody who doesn't match, you know, Joy Behar's ideal, like Hillary Clinton -- if you're not full Hillary Clinton, you're a woman-traitor."

Graham was still defending Loesch in an Oct. 9 post, insisting that she was being misquoted by the Washingotn Post's Jonathan Capehart in a TV appearance, even though the transcript clearly shows (and Graham boldfaced) Capehart saying he was "paraphrasing":

The PBS NewsHour caught up on the Hunter Biden scoop on Friday night, but that wasn't the subject when it came to reviewing the news of the week. The taxpayer-funded crew all assumed Herschel Walker was guilty of paying for an abortion, as the Daily Beast is asserting, and there was zero mention of Walker's denials!

Jonathan Capehart was so eager to smear all the Republicans, he asserted that conservative radio host Dana Loesch doesn't care about children -- which is always a weird allegation against pro-lifers.

[...]

Loesch provoked liberals by asserting "If the Daily Beast story is true, you’re telling me Walker used his money to reportedly pay some skank for an abortion and Warnock wants to use all of our monies to pay a whole bunch of skanks for abortions.” She added "I don’t care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles — I want control of the Senate.” Like many conservatives, she sees the Daily Beast as using an anonymous woman's claims to keep Sen. Raphael Warnock in power.

Graham then jumped to an earlier PBS segment on Hunter Biden, with whom the MRC remains bizarrely obsessed.

WND's Kupelian Demonizes Dems To Try And Scare Voters Into Supporting Republicans
Topic: WorldNetDaily

The September issue of WorldNetDaily's sparsely read Whistleblower magazine is called "Stopping the Madness: A Midterm Election Guide for Voters who Love America." As expected, the magazine is short on actual guidance and very long on fearmongering about anyone who's not as far-right as they are. This is further enforced by managing editor David Kupelian's introductory essay, which starts out by adding another freakout to the ones WND has already published about President Biden's speech calling out the extremism of MAGA Republicans:

Horrified by what has been called the Sovietization of the Biden administration – including the shocking criminalization of dissent and the weaponization of the FBI, whose agents daily arrest, intimidate and persecute the regime's political opponents – tens of millions of Americans anxiously wonder whether November's midterm elections will bring any positive change of direction for a once-great nation now careening toward total destruction.

Although many voices are weighing in on "what's at stake" in the midterms, ironically no one has expressed it more clearly or forcefully than Joe Biden himself, in his astonishingly dark Sept. 1 "Soul of the Nation" speech, delivered while bathed in ominous red lights and flanked by Marine guards.

Of course, the key to de-coding Biden's dire warnings about the "greatest threats to America" is to understand that he was engaging in a mirror-perfect case of political projection: Every single evil that Biden ascribed to "MAGA Republicans" – the Left's new name for America's vast center-right middle class, literally the nation's backbone – is actually true of today's Democratic Party and its unhinged supporters.

[...]

Again, by just substituting "Radical Democrats" for "MAGA Republicans," one gains a vivid and stunningly accurate description of the ever-growing neo-communist threat to America.

We're not aware of anyone who has referred to  "the Sovietization of the Biden administration" other than Kupelian himself, so it's weird that he's trying to make it a thing. But Kupelian was nowhere near done ranting:

But delving deeper still, all of this is rooted in the fact that today's Democratic Party is, in a very real sense, "possessed" – that is, its political and thought leaders have been completely taken over by the kind of dark psychological and spiritual forces that readily capture the minds of corrupted human beings who have turned their backs on God and His laws of life. These exact same forces have animated history's most destructive, cult-like political movements, most obviously communism/Marxism/socialism, which has been metastasizing around the world for the past century – and now has its sights set on America.

et even such controversial ideological labels are, themselves, essentially lies intended to create a moral façade that either covers up or justifies deeply inhuman and criminal behavior. That is, the ideological labels are just an attempt to sell the notion that, whether or not one agrees with their ideology, "communists," "socialists" and "Marxists" – and "Antifa" (short for "anti-fascist"), "Black Lives Matter" and today's "Democratic Party" – still somehow have the interests of others at heart.

It's a lie. We're talking about sociopaths, people without a functioning conscience. Deeply corrupt people like Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Adam Schiff and their ilk do not possess the capacity to actually care about anyone else, any more than a drug addict has the capacity to unselfishly care about others. And these ruling elites are addicted to the most powerful and addictive drug of all: POWER.

[...]

What's being described here is a deeply compromised and corrupt class of people, possessed and controlled by dark spiritual "powers and principalities" about which they know nothing, and care less. Whatever their professed religion, they are mockers of God, the same sort of people who self-righteously expanded communism over so much of the world and made the 20th century the bloodiest and deadliest in all of human history. Today, they're laser-focused on the biggest prize of all: The United States of America.

That's what's at stake.

Of course, one could just as easily say that Kupelian, Joseph Farah and other WND employees are addicted to the alleged power that comes with being an unquestioning simp for Donald Trump. Indeed, by his own definition, Kupelian cold be described as a sociopath for selling out the Christian principles he claims to have to throw his support behind a profounding immoral, hate-filled man in pursuit of power in the form of having said immoral man reshape the country to his own far-right liking -- and then, four years later, publish lie after lie about how the election was purported "stolen" from the immoral man. That behavior in and of itself shows what a profoundly hypocritial Christian Kupelian is.

Kupelian then moved to invoke another profoundly imm oral man -- and a criminal toboot -- to scare his fellow right-wing Christians into voting:

But good Americans, as former Trump adviser Steve Bannon passionately argues, simply must outvote whatever fraud occurs.

Therefore, one final word to Christians, who still constitute the vast majority of Americans and potential voters:

Every election cycle, tens of millions of American Christians do not vote!

How is that even possible, one wonders, considering that so much of what Democrats are pushing right now – from congressionally "codifying Roe" so that throughout America abortion will again be legal up to the moment of birth – i.e., straight-up infanticide – to expanding the satanic craze of amputating body parts of multitudes of children tricked into believing they're "transgender" – amounts to a grotesque frontal attack on everything Christians, indeed all decent people, consider sacred?

If Kupelian was the "decent person" he claims to be, he would stop publishing lies and profoundly apologize for the lies he is responsible for spreading (which would be all of them, given that he's the managing editor of WND).

Finally, if Kupelian was the genuine Christian he wants us to be, he would not be spreading lies, hate and misinformation in the name of Chrstianity to get people to vote, and he would give both sides a reasonable opportunity to argue their views. But Kupelian is not that man -- which is just one reason why WND continues to teeter on the brink of extinction.

A Black Woman Plays A Flute, And The MRC Is Outraged
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center has a thing about making fat jokes about the musician known as Lizzo. So when she was given the opportunity by the Library of Congress to play a 200-year-old crystal flute once belonging to James Madison, the MRC did not take it well. Jason Cohen wrote in a Sept. 28 post headlined "Plus Size Pop Icon Lizzo Lauded for Historically Inappropriate Moves" -- the "move" in question, preumably, being a non-skinny black woman playing a historic flute:

In a crazy clash of classiness and trashiness, popular singer Lizzo played James Madison’s 200- year-old crystal flute at her concert in DC while scantily clad and twerking.

In typical narcissistic fashion, she tweeted:

“NOBODY HAS EVER HEARD THIS FAMOUS CRYSTAL FLUTE BEFORE 

NOW YOU HAVE

IM THE FIRST & ONLY PERSON TO EVER PLAY THIS PRESIDENTIAL 200-YEAR-OLD CRYSTAL FLUTE— THANK YOU @librarycongress

As referenced in Lizzo’s tweet, the flute is owned  by the Library of Congress. Lizzo is mainly known for being a singer and “body positivity” icon, but she has also been a flutist since grade school. 

Despite the distasteful display, Lizzo’s actions were largely glorified by the media.

Adding to the obscenity, Lizzo exclaimed, “B***h, I just twerked and played James Madison’s crystal flute from the 1800s. We just made history tonight!” 

Ideas of history, along with those of beauty and class, just ain’t what they used to be.

When the co-hosts of "The View" called out right-wing outrage over this "move," Nicholas Fondacaro raged in a Sept. 30 post:

In a publicity stunt, some argue was designed to generate outrage this week, the Library of Congress allowed degenerate singer Lizzo to parade around half naked on stage while twerking and playing former President James Madison’s crystal flute. On Friday, the cackling coven of ABC’s The View looked on with glee as they mocked some conservatives for getting upset and argued that the disgusting display was retribution against Madison because he owned slaves.

Getting into the segment, co-host Joy Behar suggested conservatives were more interested in the flute than helping people recover from Hurricane Ian and stemming inflation. “While the country deals with hurricanes, inflation, and fight for abortion rights, some conservatives are focusing their rage on Lizzo. Why? They're annoyed that she's playing a crystal flute, a flute,” she chided (failing to mention President Biden was at a fundraiser while the storm killed people).

“These Trumpers need to have the same reverence for the Constitution as they do for the flute,” she whined following a video of Lizzo’s performance.

The hypocrisy in that statement was so thick that it ran like syrup. The View didn’t care about revering the Constitution when they gave a platform to leftist extremist Elie Mystal to call it “trash” and cheer. They also defended 2016 election denialism and decried the Electoral College. And they’ve also called for packing the Supreme Court.

[...]

Hostin went on to suggest Lizzo’s performance was justice, 200 years in the making. “Well, James Madison owned a hundred slaves. That's a degradation of history, right? And he still became the president. So, I think this is kind of a full-circle moment for American history,” she snarked.

Fondacaro never explained what, exactly, is "degenerate" about Lizzo -- leaving us to speculate that his main gripe is that a non-skinny black woman was allowed to play a historic flute, --and he did not explain why that act was supposedly "designed to generate outrage." Then again, that "outrage" purportedly engendered by Lizzo's act was pretty much limited to perpetually outraged right-wingers like Fondacaro who are prone to see anything that makes them mad as a "liberal" provocation rather than a sign that they should lighten up a bit and stop being perpetual rage-bots.

NEW ARTICLE: CNS' Holy War Against Nancy Pelosi, Part 2
Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com cheered that Pelosi's bishop forbade her from receiving Communion for refusing to impose anti-abortion laws on the entire country, then got mad that she visited the Pope. Read more >>

MRC Exploits Fetterman's Stroke For Partisan (And Oz's) Gain
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center largely ignored Democrat John Fetterman in his race for a Pennsylvania Senate seat. A February 2021 post by Alex Christy dismissed him as among the the "lefties" being promoted by the "hacks" on MSNBC, and another post that month briefly mentioned him -- but it wasn't until this past August, after Fetterman suffered a stroke yet still spent the summer owning his Republican opponent, Mehmet Oz, on social media that the MRC got around to mentioning him again, in a post by Scott whitlock fearmongering that Fetterman "supports abortion up to birth."

It was around then that the MRC started to realize it could exploit Fetterman's stroke to serve as a Republican surrogate in driving up concerns about his health and boosting Oz. A Sept. 1 post by Alex Christy complained about a "softball" interview Fetterman did with MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle, mocking that Fetterman "looked like he was doing the interview from a dungeon" and whining: "Ruhle didn’t ask Fetterman if his health problems could limit his effectiveness as a senator, only how he plans to convince voters it won’t. She did ask if he eventually plans to debate Oz, but did not press him on it when he equated all concerns about his health with mocking his stroke."

In a Sept. 12 post, Curtis Houck cruelly sneered that a press release announcing the hated ex-CNN host  Brian Stelter's new position as a fellow at Harvard sounds "just as painful as John Fetterman trying to offer a complete sentence."

That exploitation really kicked in after an NBC interview with Fetterman that just happened to mesh with right-wing anti-Fetterman narratives that seek to portray him as too sick to hold office. An Oct. 11 post by Kevin Tober repeatedly hyped Fetterman's purportedly fragile state:

NBC correspondent Dasha Burns broke news Tuesday when she revealed on both MSNBC and NBC Nightly News that Pennsylvania Democrat Senate candidate John Fetterman is in worse shape than originally thought after his near-debilitating stroke. 

While previewing her exclusive interview with Fetterman, Burns told viewers that his “campaign required close captioning technology for this interview to essentially read our questions as we asked them.”  

She went on to note that “in small talk before the interview without captioning, it wasn't clear he was understanding our conversation.”

[...]

Despite his obvious struggles with putting together basic sentences, the Democrat Party and their propaganda arm in the media are still propping him up like nothing is wrong.

If he was a Republican candidate for United States Senate, this wouldn’t be Fetterman’s first tough interview and the media would be hounding him from now until November.

The next day, in whining about a Seth Meyers segment mocking right-wing Halloween candy fearmongering, Christylinked to Tober's attack post to sneer, Maybe for his Thursday show, Meyers will talk about how Starburst is really just another term for 'the John Fetterman Campaign.'" Tim Graham praised NBC's interview with Fetterman -- because it served Republican purposes in hurting Fetterman and helping Oz -- in the writeup for his Oct. 12 podcast:

Meanwhile, NBC reporter Dasha Burns sternly questioned John Fetterman about his lack of transparency about his medical struggles after a stroke. Burns upset liberals by explaining beforehand that Fetterman required a Tele-Prompter to understand the questions, since he's having "auditory processing" issues. Democrats don't want you discussing how Fetterman is currently unable to debate on the floor of the Senate.

The MRC then moved on to attacking anyone who defended Fetterman by pointing out the reality of post-stroke auditory processing issues. Christy huffed in an Oct. 13 post:

Trevor Noah used the Wednesday installment of The Daily Show on Comedy Central to defend Pennsylvania Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman from criticism he is not healthy enough to serve by comparing him to disabled war veterans Dan Crenshaw and Tammy Duckworth.

[...]

After playing a clip from the NBC interview, Noah joked that Fetterman’s speech problems make him not that different than Presidents Trump and Biden, but why the country should want a third bumbler was not answered.

[...]

Those are physical disability that has not impacted those two’s ability to do their jobs. A stroke is a different matter.

Nicholas Fondacaro struck the same tone in another post the same day:

Two days after NBC News reporter Dasha Burns made headlines with her first-hand account detailing just how extensive Democratic Pennsylvania Senate nominee John Fetterman’s deterioration post-stroke was, the cackling coven of ABC’s The View had their knives out for her. They suggested Burns broke journalistic ethics, it was no big deal that Fetterman couldn’t comprehend speech and mocked Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker (R) for supposedly having an impairment too.

[...]

Flaunting a stunning level of cognitive dissonance and hypocrisy, Haines would soon follow up by decrying a comment made by the “PR team” for the Republican in the race, Mehmet Oz, about Fetterman not eating vegetables. She made her point by reading the response from the Fetterman camp, “I know politics can be nasty, but even then I could never imagine ridiculing someone for their health challenges.”

Again, this came after Haines and the rest of the cast roared with laughter at the possibility that Walker had brain damage.

This wasn’t the first time The View defended the questionable mental capacities of a Democrat. Last month, they circled the wagons for President Biden after he called out for a member of Congress who had been deceased for nearly two months. They diagnosed Biden with a “brain fart” moment.

Mark Finkelstein whined that the folks on "Morning Joe" pivoted to criticizing Oz instead of continuing to further right-wing narratives, while also invoking the NBC interview:

It was a schizoid Morning Joe today. On the one hand, Joe Scarborough and others defended NBC reporter Dasha Burns against criticism she has received from the liberal media for her comments on her interview with Fetterman. During the interview, Fetterman relied on closed captioning to understand her questions. In a subsequent NBC Nightly News appearance, Burns noted, "in small talk before the interview, without captioning, it wasn't clear he was understanding our conversation."

But Morning Joe quickly pivoted to trashing Dr. Oz, Fetterman's Republican opponent in the US Senate race in Pennsylvania. The attack on Oz was capped by Mika Brzezinski saying "we'll put doctor in quotes for Dr. Oz." For the record, Oz received his undergraduate degree in biology magna cum laude from Harvard. He went on to obtain MD and MBA degrees from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Penn's Wharton School.

[...]

Note: Scarborough & Co. deserve little credit for not denying the undeniable. Of course, Fetterman's incapacity is a bona fide issue for voters. If Fetterman needs closed captioning to understand people, he will be incapable of functioning in informal environments where, on the fly, consitutents, reporters, and others are seeking to interact with him.

Houck used an appearance on Fox News -- presumably earned through all the Doocy-fluffing he has done over the past couple years -- to defend the NBC interview:

Making his latest appearance early Friday/late Thursday on the Fox News Channel’s Fox News @ Night, NewsBusters Managing Editor Curtis Houck teamed with District Media Group’s Beverly Hallberg to take down the liberal media for attacking NBC’s Dasha Burns after she pressed Pennsylvania senatorial candidate John Fetterman on his cognitive struggles since he suffered a stroke in May.

Houck picked this random act of journalism in the liberal media as his media highlight of the week, explaining that in sitting “down with John Fetterman for an in-person interview show” after he had skated by with taped, remote interviews with friendly liberals at MSNBC in Lawrence O’Donnell and Stephanie Ruhle.

“[O]ther than in the fact that she didn’t press him on abortion. You know, she really pinned him down about his fitness, physically and mentally to be a senator from the great State of Pennsylvania,” he added, noting that a Burns interview with Republican Mehmet Oz would air Friday on NBC’s Today.

[...]

Houck closed on a high note, crediting NBC for standing by Burns and remarking that he hadn’t “seen the media circle the wagons this much around a story since...the New York Post and Hunter Biden” in fall 2020.

Unmentioned, of course, is the right-wing media circling the wagons around Herschel Walker after his abortion scandal was exposed -- something the MRC defended. Houck also made sure not to mention his own embarrassingly softball interview with Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, so he's hardly one to praise the tough questions of others (but only if they advance right-wing narratives).

How CNS Flipped From Hating Kanye West To Loving Him
Topic: CNSNews.com

Like its Media Research Center parent, CNSNews.com hated Kanye West before it loved him, using its stable of columnists to do so:

• It published a 2008 column by then-MRC apparatchik Dan Gainor complaining that "Top performers bash President Bush as a matter of faith," citing as an example "Kanye West’s embarrassing stupid comments saying: 'George Bush doesn't care about black people'" during a benefit concert for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
• It also published a 2010 column by Michelle Malkin decaring that West won "the Olympic gold medal for racial grievance-mongering" for that comment, as well as a column that year by MRC boss Brent Bozell ranting about how "idiotic rapper Kanye West shouted during an NBC telethon that Bush didn’t care about black people."
• Bozell sneered in a 2012 column that "Rapper Kanye West, worth $70 million, showed up to the [Occupy Wall Street] protests in New York wearing gold chains."

Bozell devoted an entire 2013 column to ranting about West:

Egotistical musicians often exaggerate their political influence, none more than the nattering, narcissistic rapper Kanye West. He has compared himself in global stature to Apple founder Steve Jobs and has titled his latest album "Yeesus."

Rolling Stone magazine has posted part of a West song titled "I Am a God," where West raps that Jesus is the "Most High," but he's a "close high."

Now it's The New York Times pandering to West's colossal self-regard — and it's downright embarrassing. Mouth-breathing Times writer/superfan Jon Caramonica stooped to telling West that "what I find probably the most moving thing that you've ever done, which is calling out President Bush at the Hurricane Katrina telethon. To me, that moment is actually the peak of putting a message in a pop format." West agreed, designating it as "a very pop moment of a lifetime or generation."

Do you remember this? Does anyone? Let me remind you of that generation-shaping moment. In the middle of an NBC telethon, as celebrities somberly asked for donations to the Red Cross, West lashed out, for no reason, and stupidly, arrogantly and rudely declared that President Bush "doesn't care about black people." He proceeded to add black people were smeared as looters and "now they've given them [police?] permission to go down and shoot us."

Lyndon LaRouche is more rational than this idiot.

CNS, however, did turn more favorably toward West a little earlier than the rest of the MRC, which didn't do so until he embraced Donald Trump. A 2015 article by Melanie Arter may or may not have been mocking West by reporting his reaction to receiving an award that "I think I maybe for the first time in my life I understand how it is to feel humbled."Another article by Arter that year foreshadowed the Trump-Kanye bromance:

If there’s one person you won’t hear GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump bashing, it’s rapper Kanye West. He told reporters Thursday that he loves West, because the rapper considers Trump to be his “all-time hero.”

“Kanye West, you know what? I’ll never say bad about him. You know why? Because he loves Trump. He loves Trump. He goes around saying Trump is my all-time hero. He says it to everybody, so Kanye West, I love him,” said Trump.

But the day after that araticle, it also published a column by Bozell and Tim Graham yet again rehashing his Katrina remark: "In the early spin, race-baiting rapper Kanye West and "objective" anchors like Brian Williams were in rhetorical sync: George Bush didn't care about black people."

A few weeks after that, though, Mark Judge -- who a couple years later would become infamous as a bit player in the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination as someone who engaged in drunken youthful antics with him (something his MRC employer sought to hide) -- touted how West praised another right-winger for president:

Rapper, Kardashian spouse and fashion designer Kanye West had high praise for Dr. Ben Carson, the Republican presidential candidate, in an interviewpublished today by Vanity Fair.

"When I run for president, I'd prefer not to run against someone," West said, while discussing his Yeezy fashion line and his desire to run for president in 2020.

"As soon as I heard [Ben] Carson speak, I tried for three weeks to get on the phone with him," said West. "I was like this is the most brilliant guy.

"And I think all of the people running now have something that each of the others needs," he said. "But the idea of this separation and this gladiator battle takes away from the main focus that the world needs help and the world needs all the people in a position of power or influence to come together."

Judge followed up a few days later with an article quoting Carson telling West to start "doing some music that might be uplifting that might give young women a sense of their value and young men a sense of responsibility." And a couple weeks after that, Judge touted how West "praised soldiers, police officers and firefighters as brave." In April 2016, Judge hyped how "Pop superstar Justin Bieber recently posted a photograph on Instagram of himself praying with fellow musicians Kanye West and Sean 'Puff Daddy' Combs."

Judg continued to obsess over West: An October 2016 article noted  that musician David Crosby criticized West by claiming that he “can neither sing, nor write, nor play."A Decmeber 2016 article noted that West met with  Trump to "discuss multicultural issues. These issues included bullying, supporting teachers, modernizing curriculums, and violence in Chicago."

West didn't surface again at CNS until 2018, when he voiced his support for Trump. An April 2018 article by MichaelMorris quoted right-wing talking hed Ben Shapiro asserting that West support of Trump "might actually matter" because it might draw support of Black people to Republicans.An article by Arter a few days later lamented that West "is facing continued backlash over his support for President Donald Trump and for recently voicing support for black conservative commentator Candace Owens." It then published a May 2018 column by Shaprio voicing hsi full support of West's support of Trump:

It's easy to dismiss Kanye West.

It's easy to dismiss him because he's nutty. This is a fellow who tweets about antique fish tanks and fur pillows. This is the guy who calls himself Yeezus (after Jesus) and suggested that then-President George W. Bush didn't care about black people in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He isn't exactly known for his bouts of emotional stability.

And in our celebrity-driven culture, we shouldn't pay too much attention to those who haven't spent a lot of time studying policy. That's how we end up with celebrity politicians, emotion-driven policy and reality television substituting for news.

With that said, Kanye West did something deeply important over the last two weeks: He opened up the debate.

[...]

What's happening? It's doubtful that West started reading Edmund Burke. It may just be that West, like a lot of Americans tired of being told what to think by their industry and racialists on all sides, is getting tired of being told what to do. It's possible that West, like most Americans, sees America as a place with problems but a place where individuals can think and achieve freely. And he's clearly willing to take part in a political debate so many of his friends aren't.

That makes West an important voice, at least for now. It does take courage to buck your entire cadre in order to publicly declare what you think. West deserves credit for that.

Yes, it only took West spouting right-wing talking points for Shapiro to deem him "an important voice." Then, in true echo-chamber fashion, Morris wrote a "news" article the next day rehashing Shapiro's praise of West. And the right-wing praise from CNS continued to pour in:

• A column by David Limbaugh hyped how "Democrats are losing their minds over Kanye West's praise of Trump and his assertion that African-Americans should be free to think for themselves and not be pressured into identity groupthink."
• Onetime WND columnist Jesse Lee Peterson wrote: "For two weeks, President Trump and artist Kanye West have expressed love and affection toward each other. Godless blacks and others have trashed Kanye for it and continued to drag Trump’s good name through the mud."
• Walter Williams kept up the narrative, writing that "West's support for Trump, along with his criticism of the "plantation" mentality of the Democratic Party, has been met with vicious backlash from the left," adding that "Kanye West is not saying anything different from what Dr. Thomas Sowell, Larry Elder, Jason Riley, I and other black libertarians/conservatives have been saying for decades." He went on to cheer that "The Kanye problem for the Democratic Party is that if the party doesn't keep blacks in line and it loses even 20 to 25 percent of the black vote, it can kiss any hope of winning any presidential and many congressional elections goodbye."

Republicans do love their message discipline, don't they?

MRC: Blame 'The Left' For Kim Kardashian Posing With Her Butt Exposed
Topic: Media Research Center
Earlier this year, the Media Research Center's Joseph Vaqzuez praised Kim Kardashian for her endorsement of the work ethic: "Get your fucking ass up and work. It seems like nobody wants to work these days. You have to surround yourself with people that want to work." This was praised as "tough love advice " that had the added benefit of "send[ing] the politically correct crowd in the liberal media into a crazed frenzy." Of course, the MRC censored her walkback a few weeks later.

But time marches on, and as we saw with Alyssa Farah Griffin, those will get honored by the MRC will eventually get Heathered. Thus, we have the spectacle of Tierin-Rose Mandelburg spending a Sept. 7 post body-shaming Kardashian for doing a magazine photo shoot that included a photo of her exposed rear end, under the nasty headline "The American Dream: Kim Kardashian’s Fat A**":

The Kardashians are only good at one thing: being naked at inappropriate times. And they just keep proving it.

Interview Magazine released it’s cover for the September 6 edition of “American Dream.” The cover featured none other than Kim Kardashian's massive dump truck. 

No, not a vehicle.

[...]

Damn! Baby got back is right! But, we’ve known that. Reminder: that IS how her fame erupted anyways. 

Eight years ago, Kim’s last (intentional) booty pic on the cover of a magazine broke the internet. She posed naked for the cover of Paper Magazine with her butt facing the camera and what looked like a black garbage bag draped just below her butt crack. At least she had a jacket on in this week's booty pic. I swear I should get workman's comp. for having to look at this garbage. 

I’m unsure what part of a giant butt with a jock strap screams “American Dream” but, to each their own I guess?

Body-shaming of Black women is a thing at the MRC -- just ask Lizzo.

Not only did Mandelburg censor any mention of her MRC colleague's praise of  Kardashian's work ethic, she uncritically quoted cranky British buy Piers Morganwhining to Kardashian that "Your entire fame and fortune are entirely attributable to your shameless, cynical exploitation of your sex life and naked body, and short-lived marriage to one of the world’s biggest and most genuinely talented music stars, Kanye West. Your only “talent” has been in duping so many people into believing you’re someone worthy of their misguided idolatry and money."

(Boy, that Kanye West reference didn't age well, did it? Remember that Mandelburg praised Ye's conservative values even after he clearly expressed his anti-Semitism.)

Mandelburg then somehow found a way to blame "the left" for Kardashian posing in a magazine with her butt exposed:

Kim has four children of her own and is a popular figure that many others see and are influenced by. Not only that but she's also promoted by children's television. At the moment she's working on voiceover for a kids show called Paw Patrol. Not a good look for either party involved.

But(t), that’s what the left wants. They want to promote promiscuity. They thrive when the internet breaks over the latest display of a naked butt. They are fueled by stirring the pot.

The only way the young children that are the core audience of "Paw Patrol" -- which are not known for caring much about celebrity stunt-casting -- are going to know about this is if some adult lady bragged to them about how she got paid to write a post mocking Kardashian's butt.