Yoel Roth, former head of trust and safety at Twitter, wrote an essay for the New York Times about how Donald  Trump and Elon Musk targeted him for harassment -- which included Musk maliciously suggesting that he was a pedophile -- the result of which was that "I’ve lived with armed guards outside my home and have had to upend my family, go into hiding for months and repeatedly move." The point of his essay, according to Mediaite, was that "The central premise of his argument is that Twitter, and other platforms, are under attack from forces that wish to weaponize them to spew hate and division while recruiting for authoritarian causes.

Naturally, the Musk-fluffers at the Media Research Center tought this was absolutely hilarious. They believe Roth deserves to be harassed -- unto death, apparently -- for the sin of  trying to protect users from hateand harassment. Gabriela Pariseau wrote a hateful Sept. 21 screed headlined "WHINER":

Twitter’s former head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth wrote a New York Times op-ed that can only be described as one long whiny self-victimizing rant. 

From the headline to the last word, Roth pathetically begged readers for pity from while complaining about being attacked for censoring former president Donald Trump. “I Was Attacked by Trump and Musk. It Was a Strategy to Change What You See Online,” the headline read before The Times  edited it to be something less laughable.

Yes, the man who quite literally led the department at Twitter that changed and controlled “what you see online” now doesn’t like the taste of his own medicine. “Backed by fans on social media, Mr. Trump publicly attacked me. Two years later, following his acquisition of Twitter and after I resigned my role as the company’s head of trust and safety, Elon Musk added fuel to the fire,”. he wrote.

Roth noted being harassed by internet trolls after Trump and his staff called attention to him and the censorship he and his team relentlessly carried out against users who bucked leftist narratives. “I’ve learned that what happened to me wasn’t an accident,” Roth claimed. “It was a strategy — one that affects not just targeted individuals like me, but all of us, as it is rapidly changing what we see online.” The lack of self-awareness is deafening.

As is Pariseau's lack of awareness that she's endorsing threats and violence against someone who helped run a social media websites. Imagine how giddy Pariseau and the rest of the MRC will be if someone actually murders Roth after being incited by Trump and Musk. She also curiously failed to mention that Musk falsely and maliciously smeared Roth as a pedophile, and she failed to explain how, exactly, it was "laughable" for Roth to point out that his dehumanization was part of a strategy by Musk to make Twitter more chaotic and hate-filled.

Pariseau's own hate-filled whinefest continued as  she complained that Roth pointed out that lies and hate are spreading more aggressively on Twitter:

Roth spent the majority of his complaint lamenting that the so-called “safety” structures he and his team built to censor content are being dismantled. 

“Universities are cutting back on efforts to quantify abusive and misleading information spreading online,” he wrote. “Social media companies are shying away from making the kind of difficult decisions my team did when we intervened against Mr. Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.”

With dramatic flair, Roth added “These attacks on internet safety and security come at a moment when the stakes for democracy could not be higher.” 

It would be remiss not to mention Roth’s dismissal of The Twitter Files which repeatedly implicate him. “The files were hyped by Mr. Musk as a groundbreaking form of transparency, purportedly exposing for the first time the way Twitter’s coastal liberal bias stifles conservative content.” Citing TechDirt journalist Mike Masnick he responded claiming “in the end ‘there was absolutely nothing of interest’ in the documents, and what little there was had  significant factual errors.” 

Well, Mr. Roth, if the Twitter Files are significantly inaccurate, please enlighten the public.

Um, Gabriela, you just quoted Roth doing exactly that -- and you didn't disprove him.

Pariseau closed by ranting: "While the U.S. government working with Twitter to silence Americans’ discussion, memes, genuine concerns, and questions may be of no interest to you, to many Americans it is an egregious violation of the First Amendment that should never happen again." She didn't expalin why trying to stop lies and hate on Twitter is an "egregious violation of the First Amendment that should never happen again" -- or just how happy she will be if somebody murders Roth.

Posted by Terry K. at 10:37 PM EDT

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Mychal Massie wants you to believe that there is no such thing as race -- but he sure spends a lot of time obsessively attacking black people despite being a black person himself, in the grand tradition of black WND columnists who sound like white segregationists. He ranted in his Aug. 7 column:

The fixation upon the mythical and corrosive idiocy that reduces human beings to crayon colors remains the most destructive influence in America today. With that said, I argue that racism is not systemic, as the pimps and prostitutes of inculcated marginalization would have people believe. However, ignorance and thoughtless gullibility are not only systemic, they're generationally bred into the psyche of people given over to the inability to reason logically.

I admit there was a time I used the assignations that had been instituted to further the social divide. This is where Christendom very much gets it wrong today. Romans 16:17 (KJV) reads: "Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them."

Christendom is to diligently observe those who cause divisions and stumbling blocks. We are to avoid all unnecessary contact with them. That specifically means we are not to embrace their divisionist practices and complaints intended to destroy America from within, as has been the neo-Leninist design. Little could anyone have realized just how thoroughly the weaponization of the fallacious construct misidentified as a skin color would lead to the deconstructing of America on every level.

Massie then attacked black activist W.E.B. Du Bois for pointing out that black people exist:

This trap started with Du Bois inventing the brilliant, albeit Satanic, creation of the assignation "colored peoples" early in the 20th century. From there America was never to be socially the same. This single act, I argue, changed forever the trajectory of the American people. That single act by Du Bois was the weaponizing of pigmentation for socio-political gain.

This move was the very definition of insidious. It was quickly absorbed into the bloodstream of America and has metastasized exponentially since then. It continues to do so unabated today; in many cases, under cover of good intentions.

It has allowed for the bastardization of not only the history of America, but the selective history of the world.

Massie didn't explain how, exactly, Du Bois fighting for equal rights was a "bastardization" of America. Massie then went the can't-we-all-get along route:

Americans aren't black, white, red, yellow, chartreuse or any other made up color. We're Americans, and as such we're one people, one nation, under [one] God, with liberty and justice for all. The problem is, there can be no justice for all if there is a focus on the predisposition to prioritize people by crayon colors and foreign nationalities that detract and/or supplant the unity of one people identified singularly as one nationality, i.e., Americans.

Massie is sounding a lot like the "Colbert Report"-era Stephen Colbert, when he played a blowhard right-wing commentator: "I just want to say that I'm not a racist. I don't even see race. Not even my own. People tell me I'm white and I believe them because I just devoted six minutes to explaining how I'm not a racist!"

Massie closed by ranting about an alleged "pathetic attempt to bully me by one of the leading left-wing commie radical Soros front groups whose responsibility it is to sponsor reprisal against those such as myself who aren't afraid to speak the truth about the planned orchestration of using melanin as a weapon against their enemies." But the link he supplied is broken, so we can't see whether he was talking about us (as one of the few people who rmake a point of reading the silly things he writes).

Massie had a similar meltdown in his Aug. 14 column:

Suffice it to say there exists within the population of those who boast of their ancestral heritage as being that of slaves, an unchecked zeitgeist of incongruous parallactic.

It's a social dysmorphic that demands a Vatican-trained team of exorcists to dislodge the grotesquely asphyxiating mentality that subscribes to one-sided blind hatred for the people and country to whom they truthfully owe their all.

I've asked many of their persuasion, but have yet to receive an answer: Where would they be if their ancestors hadn't allegedly come here as slaves from the jungles? When I think of early Africans, Caribbean and West Indian settlers to America – before Democrats commercialized slavery and/or former slaves – I think Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglas, George Washington Carver, Percy L. Julian, James Durham, Daniel Hale Williams, Norbert Rillieux, St. Elmo Brady, Garrett Morgan et al.

One of the most grievous consequences of the successful inculcation of the Erebusic inclusion of pernicious lies and the recension of factual history into a political construct of baseless heterodoxies successfully introduced into classrooms, has been a multi-year plan of occlusion to modernity.

Yes, Massie is beating us with his thesaurus again. Massie went on to blame black people for purportedly hating white people for no reason, as opposed to being pointing out that the white ruling class systemically discriminated against black people for centuries:

Paraphrasing the late Daniel Patrick P. Moynihan: The social alienation among the [so-called] black lower classes is matched and probably enhanced by a virulent form of anti-white feeling among portions of the large and prospering melanin-identified of their middle class. His words were prescient.

But by the 1970s, the trend of civility had changed. Moynihan wrote: "The incidence of anti-social behavior among young black males continues to be extraordinarily high." This trend continues unabated today, the difference being it's rewarded as culturally acceptable and rebranded as hip-hop culture.

Massie further tried to blame welfare and abortion for decimating black families:

Those people were proud of their work ethic and placed a high premium upon social propriety. But, with the introduction of pigment-based affirmative action and the fashionable acceptance of welfare and husbandless/fatherless homes, the organized deconstruction of the Negro family was fully underway. Add to that, the push to have children as a means of receiving more government money, i.e., welfare.

The payback for the initial payout has increased in return by untold hundreds of percent thanks to abortion and the industrialized systematic extermination of Negro children.

This has wrought a culture where self-segregation is also applauded and encouraged by universities, colleges and public schools across America.

Massie concluded with his own odd take on civil rights:

What I walk away with is: There never was a need to fight for civil rights. There was a need to uphold the Constitution. And these people who are today promoting segregation are the progeny of the same socio-political philosophy that Democrats embraced when they co-opted and weaponized the KKK.

It shouldn't take a court ruling to end the reprobate behavior of these Negro con-artists and liars; if they had any decency they would never engineer such racist barbarism nor allow themselves to be exploited in such a way.

Of course, equal rights for non-white people were not specifically enumerated in the Constiution as originally written -- something Massie didn't mention.

Posted by Terry K. at 11:37 AM EDT

Updated: Sunday, October 15, 2023 11:37 AM EDT

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The Media Research Center's Clay Waters huffed in an Aug. 18 post:

New York Times "democracy reporter" Nick Corasaniti adopted a vengeful tone in his report on some Trump allies getting their legal comeuppance. The gloating was even in the headline on Wednesday: “After Years of Lies, Election Deniers Face Something New: Consequences.”

Waters didn't explain why it was "vengeful" for people to face the consequences of their actions. When the article pointed out that one of the schemes used by thetruthers was 'filing reams of frivolous lawsuits," Waters complained: "Charged for filing lawsuits someone somewhere considers to be frivolous? Aren’t lawsuits a routine method for liberals to get their way? It’s certainly easier going through the courts then actually getting legislation passed." Waters cited no "liberal" court action that has been found similarly "frivolous," He also failed to explain why he believes no Trump-related lawsuit should have been deemed as such, and he did not follow up on his suggestion that partisan intent has something to do with all those "frivolous" findings.

Waters then ranted that it was "sinister" for the reporter to forward the argument -- made by legal experts -- that violent pro-Trump insurrectionists feeling the full force of the law after the Capitol riot is discouraging others from trying to stage similar protests out of fear or arrest. Rather than explain why, exactly, this was "sinister" -- actually, most people would consider law enforcement discouraging people from committing crimes and being violent to be a good thing -- he resorted to his usual whataboutism: "In January 2017, feminists in pink pussy hats protested Trump’s looming inauguration at the Women’s March in D.C. and were greeted with the Times by joy, not the threat of arrest. The Black Lives Matter protests often devolved into rioting, but that violence was underplayed by the paper."

He concluded by pretending to read the mind of the reporter, claiming that he "more or less admitted that the fourth indictment against Trump was a legal stretch, though of course he couched the revelation in terms that wouldn’t frighten his liberal readership," allegedly by stating that "bringing criminal charges for trying to overturn an election is relatively uncharted legal terrain."

The actual stretch here was Waters trying to mine this article as yet another reason to hate the Times. But that's his job, so his paycheck mandates that he manufacture that hate any way he can.

Posted by Terry K. at 10:18 AM EDT

Updated: Saturday, October 14, 2023 10:26 AM EDT

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One of Joseph Farah's last columns before he mysteriously disappeared from day-to-day writing duties at WorldNetDaily -- an absence WND has yet to publicly explain -- was an Aug. 28 piece that attemped to pggyback on WND's enthusiasm for the right-wing film "Sound of Freedom" with his dated vision that people still care about bumper stickers, echoing his "Thou Shalt Not Steal Elections" bumper sticker introduced a couple months earlier:

Jim Caviezel, the man who starred in "Sound of Freedom," says the biggest market for child sex is right here in the good ol' USA. But you're not supposed to know that.

When President Donald J. Trump saw the film he was moved. In an action that should be universally applauded, he expressed his unequivocal support for the fight against this horrific crime. If elected president next year, he declared, "I will return all trafficked children to their families in their home countries and without delay."

Caviezel, who portrayed Jesus in another box-office bonanza, called Trump the "new Moses" for his promise "to save children the likes of which you have never seen."

What do Moses and Trump have in common? Babies were slaughtered in Egypt. And they are being slaughtered today in the United States and around the world.

To help mark this important film, to honor it and remember it, to steel its truth for a generation, and to help us never forget the children "the likes of which you have never seen," we bring you this bumper sticker from WND.

"THOU SHALT NOT TRAFFIC CHILDREN"

Not even a terribly original take on his previous election-related sticker. Farah on to complain about the movie being unfairly criticized -- while not actually explaining the criticism of the film and Caviezel being very QAnon-adjacent -- and slagged a more popular movie:

Why is the world only now taking the "Sound of Freedom" so seriously? Why have we waited this long for this movie to be made? Why are there such lies being told about it despite its unconventional success?

What questions do you have to ask Google to find out about it? What television shows do you have to watch to find out it's been the most popular movie in the United States – and the most endearing and disturbing?

That's not true. Perhaps the most disturbing movie is the one that replaced it as the highest-grossing movie of the year – "Barbie." Do the kids and adults seeing it realize what they are watching in the opening scenes? Abortion. Hatred of children. It's disgusting from beginning to end. Just watch Jonathan Cahn's YouTube video called "The Mystery Of Barbie, Ishtar, and Smashed Babies!"

We'll get to that video at a later date since WND also promoted it. Farah concluded by plugging thte WND online store as well as the previous bumper sticker: "It's a message that resonates with every American more each day as the media play the drumbeat that Trump will somehow not be eligible to contest for the presidency next year due to his indictments. This would be another attempt to steal an election from him."

WND republished Farah's column a few days later, on Sept. 5, without explanation.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:42 AM EDT

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The Media Research Center's collective lingering case of Obama Derangement Syndrome has continued to linger throughout this year. Some recent examples:

• A May 11 post by Alex Christy complained; "For the third episode of Iconic America, PBS explored the history and meaning of the Gadsden Flag and during the portion covering the Tea Party protests during the Obama era, the assorted cast sought to reduce those protests to racists and other bigots. ... These normal protestors of all races were lumped in with birthers who wanted to “send him back to Kenya” and conspiracy theorists who claimed Obama is a Muslim." We dont' recall the MRC previously making a distinction between "normal" Obama-hating protesters and the "conspiracy theorists."
• Christy groused in a May 15 post that "The cast of CBS Mornings oohed and aahed on Tuesday in a response to their interview of Barack Obama where the former president pushed Australian-style gun control and lamented that networks like CBS do not have the power they once did. Nate Burleson claimed the interview made him want to be a better journalist, Tony Dokoupil claimed Obama’s views on guns were “historically” correct and Obama donor and vacation pal Gayle King claimed Obama’s character, integrity, and intelligence are never to be questioned.
• A June 23 post by Christy whined about an interivew Obama did with CNN's Christiane Amanpour, particiularly that he "continued to ramble about the GOP and “the siloing of information” and how people who watch Fox News live in a different world than people who read the New York Times," further grumbling that "Most of the interview was full of softballs."
• Four days later, Christy whined that "racial provocateur Wesley Lowery" pointed out that racism in the U.S. didn't stop because Obama was elected president and that there was a bit of a white backlash to it; he insisted that under Lowery's thinking, "The country is thus in a no-win situation. Even if both parties elect black people, it doesn’t matter, because Lowery won’t allow himself to see people as anything other than racists." Christy also claimed that "In reality, Lowery and his interviewers only showed that not everybody likes Barack Obama, high crime, or supports gender ideology."
• A July 30 post by Clay Waters complained about another TV appearance by the "far-left race-baiting" Lowery "about his new book on how white Americans and the Republican Party became scared and possibly dangerous racists after Barack Obama’s election.? Waters made no attempt to disprove anything Lowery said.

An interview with the author of a 6-year-old biography of Obama, however, set off serious Obama deragnement bells, and Tim Graham spent his Aug. 9 column defending the book and bashing Obama yet again:

The media deification of Barack Obama has really never ended. His election to the presidency in 2008 was treated as a milestone, like man landing on the moon. Allegedly objective journalists lined up in every studio and on every front page to do him homage.

It wasn’t journalism. It was more like idolatry. It was like Bryant Gumbel harshly replying in 1989 to new information about Rev. Martin Luther King’s adultery. He said "When the truth collides with a legend, print the legend."

This line came to mind in reading a recent Tablet magazine interview with liberal historian David Garrow, a Martin Luther King specialist. Garrow's massive 2017 tome on Obama – titled Rising Star – was blasted by New York Times chief book critic Michiko Kakutani. She argued his epilogue was like a “Republican attack ad.” This is comical, since Garrow's epilogue recounted quotes from, among others, liberals at the Times and The Washington Post.

[...]

[David] Samuels suggests Garrow’s book was scorned because it highlighted “a remarkable lack of curiosity” about a man who was “treated less like a politician and more like the idol of an inter-elite cult.” It underlined that as Obama decided he wanted to be president one day, he realized having a white wife would be an obstacle.

Obama’s memoir told a story about taking his composite girlfriend to a “very angry play” by a black playwright and she came out “talking about why black people were angry all the time. I said it was a matter of remembering – nobody asks why Jews remember the Holocaust, I think I said.”

[...]

This might seem like fragments of ancient history, but every negative fragment about Obama has the potential to upset the cemented mythology. The Obama of myth never compromises his ideals (or invents personal history) to get ahead. That’s why book critics accuse authors of writing “Republican attack ads” when they throw a negative shadow. “When the truth collides with a legend, print the legend.” 

Actually, it is ancient history, given that Obama left office nearly seven years ago. Graham just looks like someone who's unable to let go of a grudge. If there's one bit of comfort to be taken from his screed, it's that he didn't go the salacious WorldNetDaily route and obsess over an alleged statement in a letter to an old girlfriend in which he alluded to gay sex. That was left to Ben Shapiro who made sure to know in a syndicated column published by the MRC on Aug. 11 that "Obama wrote letters to a girlfriend in which he “repeatedly fantasizes about making love to men.” He did serve up more grudgey Graham stuff, huffing that Obama's "victory -- that triumph -- came at the expense of the American people, who were promised a racial conciliator and a man of honor by a media invested in that lie. When the truth materialized and our institutions continued to perpetuate the lie, our institutions collapsed. We live in the era of Barack Obama still." somehow, that collapse is never the fault of righ-wingers like Graham and Shapiro who hated Obama so intensely that they refused to cooperate with him in any way lest he be seen as a successful president.

Posted by Terry K. at 9:47 PM EDT

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James Hirsen wrote in an Aug. 31 Newsmax column:

It’s been almost three and a half years since public health officials first urged the locking down of America in order to prevent the spread of a virus.

As talk of a possible repeat scenario grows louder, it might be prudent to stop and reflect on what we have gone through psychologically, socially, and emotionally, particularly our children.

When lockdowns were implemented, some prominent professionals questioned the policy.

For doing so, they were maligned and sometimes even censored.

Dr. Martin Kulldorff (Harvard), Dr. Sunetra Gupta (Oxford), and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford) are three highly qualified epidemiologists, who at a pivotal point in history came together to publish a document.

The document, titled the "Great Barrington Declaration," made the case that lockdowns have a deleterious effect upon children.

Additionally, an argument was made that denying children the opportunity to attend school was particularly harmful.

The scholars were subsequently disparaged by public officials and certain media figures, as if there were an effort in place to avoid open debate of the document’s content.

But Hirsen is dishonestly hiding the full contents of the document, nor did he offer any evidence that  Bhattacharya and the other signatories were criticized solely because of the document discussing how COVID lockdowns might affect children. In fact, the key statement of the Great Barrington Declaration is that COVID should be allowed to spread to develop "herd immunity" -- a dangerous proposition at a time when the virus was still killing many people daily, vaccines had not yet been developed, and it was unclear that herd immunity would even work (and it doesn't, given the need for regular vaccinations).

Rather than discuss that crucial aspect of the declaration -- which, arguably, what was most criticized -- Hirsen chose to narrowly focus on the effects on children and praised the signatories as heroes for being proven right on that (despite, again, offering no evidence that anyone criticized that aspect ofthe declartion):

In retrospect, the doctors and other professionals who were disparaged and/or censored were accurate in their assessments of the negative effects of lockdowns on school-aged children.

Millions of young people could have been spared the negative psychological, social, and emotional ramifications of the lockdowns.

Heaven forbid that we have a repeat of this history.

Then again, Hirsen defended far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for ranting that a proposed COVID passport would be a "mark of the beast," so maybe he's not the person anyobne should look to for cogent commentary on COVID-related issues.

Posted by Terry K. at 7:50 PM EDT

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WorldNetDaily took its Biden Derangement Syndrome to a new level in the August issue of its sparsely read Whistleblower magazine, actually accuses President Biden of engagingin sex trafficking of children. Thepromo copy for the issue begins with the usual (for WND, anyway) anti-Biden ranting:

It’s shocking, though in no way overstated, to conclude that Americans today are living through a time of total spiritual warfare, when virtually all of the most contentious and consequential issues are neither political, ideological nor psychological. They are flat-out spiritual – good versus evil.

There’s the early sexualization of innocent children in the nation’s public schools. And the mass-hysteria transgender craze that seduces mentally fragile teenagers into undergoing mutilating and irreversible surgeries. And the love affair with killing human babies in their mother’s womb. And the massive foreign invasion of America, purposefully engineered by a senile, forever-lying and epically corrupt president. And the ever-growing persecution of law-abiding, God-fearing Americans branded as “violent extremists” and “domestic terrorists.” And the pretend existential “climate change” crisis, and the pretend “white supremacy” crisis, and so much more.

The copy then directly accuses Biden of sex trafficking, with the help of "Sound of Freedom" film subject Tim Ballard:

In light of this, it’s doubly shocking to realize – as Tim Ballard, who has led many missions rescuing sex-trafficked children around the world, points out – that the Biden administration is actually enabling and promoting the trafficking and sexual slavery of children.

[...]

Ballard’s concerns are confirmed by Tara Lee Rodas, a Health and Human Services whistleblower who testified in April before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security and Enforcement. Because of the Biden administration's border policies, she said, a staggering 85,000 migrant children are missing in America.

“Today,” in the United States of America, the whistleblower testified, “children will work overnight shifts at slaughterhouses, factories, restaurants to pay their debts to smugglers and traffickers. Today, children will be sold for sex. Today, children will call a hotline to report they are being abused, neglected, and trafficked.”

Under Biden, she pleaded, “the U.S. government has become the middleman in a large-scale, multi-billion-dollar child trafficking operation.”

WND has no actual direct evidence of this, of course.

This was accompanied by the usual hate-filled screed making the same points by managing editor David Kupelian, which was published at WND on Aug. 22:

The Biden administration policy of intentionally engineering a full-scale foreign invasion of America across her southern border – which in turn has facilitated what a key federal whistleblower calls a “large-scale, multi-billion-dollar child trafficking operation” with “the U.S. government" as "the middleman” – is evil, most normal people would agree.

This mega-crisis resulted in the passage of Republican-led legislation last month to slow down the endless waves of exploited humans illegally entering the U.S. by extending Donald Trump's border wall. But as everyone now knows, to sabotage the legislation Biden has been essentially throwing away $300 million worth of taxpayer-funded border-wall components by auctioning them off for next to nothing, just to make sure the wall is never built, and that the alien invasion – including the cartel-financed sex trafficking of countless young children – continues.

Since the issue was inspired by "Sound od Freedom," Kupelian made sure to rehash WND's complaints about criticism of the movie:

Likewise, many left-leaning media outlets have taken to attacking “Sound of Freedom,” some claiming the anti-child trafficking blockbuster is a "QAnon fantasy." For example, Rolling Stone’s review – headlined ''Sound Of Freedom' Is a Superhero Movie for Dads With Brainworms' – claims “The QAnon-tinged thriller about child-trafficking is designed to appeal to the conscience of a conspiracy-addled boomer." The Guardian newspaper similarly describes “Sound of Freedom” as “the QAnon-adjacent thriller seducing America.”

Of course, Kupelian refused to admit that the film is very much QAnon-adjacent or disclose that star Jim Caviezel is an extremist QAnon adherent. He also threw a little Clinton derangement as well, via Jeffrey Epstein:

The most familiar albeit infamous elite example, of course, would be Jeffrey Epstein and his so-called “Pedophile Island” in the U.S. Virgin Islands, which served as the hub of an international sex trafficking ring exploiting girls as young as 11. It was frequently visited by world celebrities, from Prince Andrew to – according to multiple sources – Bill Clinton. In 2019, Epstein died suspiciously in a New York detention center while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. Officials insisted he had committed suicide, although numerous forensic experts claimed suicide was virtually impossible based on Epstein’s injuries, and there was enormous motivation for famous participants to want him silenced. After all, Epstein’s private Boeing 727, the “Lolita Express,” often took famous guests to his private island. And according to flight logs, Bill Clinton traveled to various locations on Epstein’s plane a total of 26 times, at least five times without his Secret Service detail.

Kupelian didn't mention that his hero, Donald Trump, also partied with Epstein and hung out on "Pedophile Island." Yet he talks only about Clinton. What is Kupelian trying to hide?

All this Biden derangement and Kupelian's selective memory tells us yet again that WND shouldn't be taken seriously.

Posted by Terry K. at 1:29 PM EDT

Updated: Friday, October 13, 2023 4:52 PM EDT

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Following its blitz of coverage of his appearance at a congressional hearing -- while also trying to clean up after an anti-Semitic remark he made -- the Media Research Center continued to work to portray Robert Kennedy Jr. as a victim of "censorship" (even though all social media is doing is responding to his false anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories). Luis Cornelio used a July 24 post to dishonestly frame correcting false information as "election interference" while praising Fox News for sticking to the right-wing narrative about what was "eclipsed" in the hearing:

Democrats are already scavenging for ways to use Big Tech to interfere with the 2024 presidential election, one lawmaker warned.

Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) had some strong words against Big Tech’s censorship of free speech during a Friday interview on Fox News’s America’s Newsroom. Buck raised the alarm that Democrats are pushing to censor Robert F. Kennedy Jr. because of the challenge he poses to the Biden regime amid the 2024 nomination process. “Obviously, they are censoring him because he is a threat to Joe Biden,” Buck said of Kennedy’s appearance during a hearing before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government on Thursday.

Buck didn’t mince his words in reaction to Democrat members of Congress and their reactions to the hearing. “There is a little irony that they’re having a hearing on censorship and trying to censor a witness,” Buck said. “Obviously, they are censoring the witness because he is a threat to Joe Biden. He’s polling somewhere in the 15 to 20% range. That scares Democrats that someone is going to pull votes away from Joe Biden and challenge him.”

Fox News Co-Host Dana Perino brought up the eclipsed but intended subject of the hearing – Big Tech censorship. “The fighting and argumentation between the Democrats and RJF Jr. yesterday sort of overshadowed the big picture about the hearing, which is this question about Big Tech and censorship,” Perino told Buck, before asking, “Do you think there are changes afoot when it comes to how the government is going to react and interact with these companies?”

Cornelio didn't ask why a Republican congressman and a right-wing "news" channel are so concerned about allowing a Democrat to be able to day whatever he wants.

We've noted how the MRC's Gabriela Pariseau bestowed even more victimhood on Kennedy through one of those selective "Twitter files" releases. Cornelio played the victmhood card for Kennedy again in a July 31 post:

YouTube’s election interference couldn’t be any more clear, as it continues to censor President Joe Biden’s primary challenger.

YouTube decided to yet again remove a video interview of Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, citing an alleged violation of its “Community Guidelines.”

The 48-minute interview, conducted by O’Keefe Media Group CEO James O’Keefe, delved into topics contentious to the approved narrative of the Biden regime, including COVID-19, the First Amendment and the collusion between Big Tech and the federal government to assault free speech.

O’Keefe, often a subject of Big Tech censorship himself, took to Twitter to condemn the news. 

“YouTube removed this video for ‘medical misinformation,’” O’Keefe said on July 28, before sharing the full video on Twitter. “Thankfully, you can still watch it here on the public square.” In a separate tweet addressed to YouTube CEO Neal Mohan, O’Keefe asked, “Tell me where in the video it hurt you @nealmohan.” O’Keefe additionally shared the interview, titled “Lawsuits, Anthony Fauci, Fear, FBI, Becoming Commander-in-Chief and more!” on Rumble, a video-hosting platform that opposes draconian censorship.

Cornelio leaned hard into the whole victimhood thing:

RFK Jr. also called out the un-American nature of the censorship assault. “Americans know, you know, innately that we're not supposed to that the government is not supposed to censor us,” the Democratic candidate for president added. “[Y]et we put up with it we said, ‘Okay those guys are scaring us and we need to shut them up. The Constitution doesn't have a pandemic exception. The First Amendment doesn't have a pandemic exception.”

YouTube’s latest assault against Robert F. Kennedy comes a week and a half after RFK Jr. testified before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government to detail the harrowing experience of facing constant censorship led by the federal government.

According to MRC Free Speech America’s exclusive CensorTrack database, YouTube has targeted RKF Jr. nine times since he first announced his bid for the Democratic nomination for president in 2024.

Cornelio failed to detail the statements Kennedy made that were deemed "medical misinformation," nor did he inform his readers that Kennedy has made numerous false and misleading claims about COVID and its vaccines. Cornelio also failed to explain why his employer is so aggressively defending a Democratic presidential candidate or why he has an entry in its biased CensorTrack database, which is all about manufacturing dubious data to portray right-wingers as victims of "censorship."

Catherine Salgado went Godwin on one of the groups who call out Kennedy's misinformation in an Aug. 7 post touting how right-wing Rep. Jim Jordan is targeting the Center for Countering Digital Hate for alleged "potential censorship collusion with the federal government": "Jordan specifically zeroed in on CCDH’s COVID-19-era report on 'The Disinformation Dozen,' which led to censorship of users like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that CCDH labeled as prominent 'anti-vaxxers.' Media Research Center founder L. Brent Bozell previously called CCDH 'digital brownshirts.'" Salgado identified no false claim about Kennedy made in the CCDH report.

An Aug. 18 post by Autumn Johnson similarly smeared the CCDH as "digital brownshirts," again complaining that the group's list of COVID misinformers included "notably Democratic Party Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has a history of questioning the efficacy of vaccines." She too failed to mention that Kennedy also has a history of spreading falsehoods and misinformation.

Tom Olohan gushed over Kennedy spouting right-wing narratives on a right-wing channel in an Aug. 29 post, while added a talking point he didn't repeat:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. laid into three massive corporations for pushing a key element of the American Dream out of reach for many American families. 

During an August 27 interview with Newsmax host Eric Bolling, presidential candidate RFK Jr. went after the ESG-friendly giants for making it more difficult and expensive for Americans and families to own a home. “These three giant companies, BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard, they own 88% of the S&P 500, there’s something wrong with that,” he said.  “And they’ve now targeted single-family homes, so the reason you’re seeing these homes go off the charts in price.” 

After naming the predatory behemoths, RFK Jr. broke down how it happens. “So many people that you know and I know have had the experience that they're about to put an offer in on the home or they put one in, somebody who swoops in with a cash offer and takes it away from them and they try to figure out who it is and it's an LLC,” the Democrat [sic] presidential candidate added. “Well those LLCs are ultimately owned by those three big companies, and you know they're on trajectory now to own 60% of the single family homes in this country by 2030.”

[...]

While these three corporations have certainly made it more difficult for young families to own homes, they are also infamous for pushing environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing on Americans and American companies. RFK Jr. is only the latest politician to sound the alarm, following testimony from public officials before Congress.

Jeffrey Lord spent his Sept. 16 column trying to manufacture a conspiracy theory that the Biden administration is ordering media outlets to cover Kennedy negatively:

The issue here is not “is RFK Jr. beating Biden.” No, the issue here is, as long as it is issuing commands to media on how to cover the anti-Biden GOP impeachment inquiry - is the Biden White House quietly issuing a command to the same Biden-protecting media? Sending the message that they need to rev up negative coverage of Biden rival and critic RFK Jr.?

In fact, Kennedy recently said this to Fox’s Martha McCallum: 

It is surreal. My polling numbers are better than Ron DeSantis and/or any other candidate except for Biden and Trump. But I’m you know, even when they talk about me on the DNC channels, on CNN and MSNBC, they always refer to me, my first name as a longshot candidate, whereas everybody else has a candidacy that is taken seriously.

[...]

In other words? Already the liberal media is instinctively expanding its Biden-protecting coverage from the typical anti-GOP coverage and extending it to include Biden’s only opponent (so far) with any standing. Democrat Marianne Williamson, unlike RFK in single digits, doesn’t yet appear to count here.

The obvious question is: if the Biden White House is issuing marching orders to the media in terms of its coverage of the GOP impeachment inquiry - are they similarly issuing marching orders to the same media on how to cover RFK Jr? Or even simply whispering those RFK marching orders quietly, without the formal letter?

It wouldn’t surprise. But it is curious indeed that RFK Jr.’s coverage in places like the lefty Washington Post and New York Times treats RFK as some sort of right-wing prank and Covid crank and that coverage from what Kennedy calls “the DNC channels, on CNN and MSNBC” isn’t much better.

Hmmm.

Lord doesn't ask why Kennedy is running to the right-wing Fox News -- which would explain the "right-wing prank" part -- or explain why he is so upset that media outlets are reporting the truth that Kennedy is, in fact, a "Covid crank."

Posted by Terry K. at 10:38 PM EDT

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The dessicated right-wing blog that CNSNews.com has been reduced to apparently still has to do some semblence "business and economic reporting" because of a gift the the Media Research Center in memory of formber MRC board member Keith C. Wold. Thus, we are still graced with slanted and cherry-picked monthly reports on employment. Craig Bannister -- the blogger who's the only person left from when CNS was a "news" operation -- served up the usual bias on August's employment numbers in a Sept. 1 post:

In August, the unemployment rate jumped 0.3 points, from 3.5% 3.8%, as the number of long-term unemployed increased, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported Friday.

The nation’s unemployment rate jumped 0.3 percentage point to 3.8% in August, as the number of unemployed persons increased by 514,000 to 6.4 million.

Among the unemployed, the number of job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs increased by 294,000 to 2.9 million in August, offsetting a decrease of 280,000 in July.

The rise in the unemployment rate, coupled an increase in job losers, highlights ongoing challenges in the economy. Meanwhile, the number of persons employed part-time for economic reasons remained unchanged.

[...]

Adding to concerns, the BLS reported that the economy’s picture in recent months wasn’t as rosy as it initially reported:

• Total nonfarm payroll employment for June was revised down by 80,000, from +185,000 to +105,000.
• July was revised down by 30,000, from +187,000 to +157,000.
• Due to these revisions, employment in June and July combined was actually 110,000 lower than previously reported.
• The downward revisions make August look better in comparison, by comparing it to lower numbers in June and July.
  

Bannister's Oct. 6 post on September's numbers triedto be as blase as possible that the numbers stayed good:

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by a surprisingly-high 336,000 in September, but most other economic indicators – such as the unemployment rate – showed little change from August, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported Friday.

September’s seasonally-adjusted 3.8% unemployment was unchanged from the previous month, as the number of unemployed persons remained at 6.4 million.

Both posts were described as having been :"funded in part" by the Wold gift. One has to wonder if the Wold familiy is happy that their gift is now attached to a right-wing blog instead of something that at least tried to pass for "news."

Posted by Terry K. at 8:19 PM EDT

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The anti-vaxxers at the Media Research Center spent the past couple of years hyping tennis star adn fellow anti-vaxxer Novak Djokovic as a victim for refusing to get a COVID vaccine and, thus, getting blocked from playing in tournaments in countries that had a vaccine requirement. As those vaccine requirements have been relaxed as the pandemic waned, the MRC is now treating Djokovic as a hero for his selfishness. Tierin-Rose Mandelburg served up some of that misguided hero worship in an Aug. 14 post:

And this ladies and gents - is why you don’t back down on what you know is the truth. 

Serbian tennis champion Novak Djokovic was on track to win numerous matches in the US Open last year but was denied entry to the states because he refused the COVID vax.

This year, due to the more relaxed restrictions on COVID-19, Djokovic was permitted to attend and his fans were thrilled.

Djokovic was denied entry to America after he refused to take the COVID-19 vaccine. At the time, it was a requirement, aka another ridiculous and unconstitutional mandate by the U.S. government, for all non-citizens to show full vaccination before entering the country.  

Standing firm in his choice, and his free will to make that choice, Djokovic dropped out of the final Grand Slam of the year to stick to his morals and principles, Daily Mail reported. He'd rather drop out of the competition than get the COVID-19 vaccine. After all, COVID-19 was not nearly as serious as the leftist media wanted you to believe and Djokovic is literally one of the best examples of a healthy man. 

Luckliy, his firmness paid off in the end. Djokovic was able to return to the U.S. this year for the tournament and began warmups in Cincinnati this week.

Actually, Tierin-Rose, it's not uncosntitutional for a government to take reasonable health measures to stem a pandemic, and vaccine requirements for foreigners are quite reasonable, whether or not you're a famous person. She concluded by declaring. "In a world full of sheep, be a Djokivic" -- even though she's acting rather sheep-like in perpetuating anti-vaxx conspiracy theories and pretending that Djokovic was acting out based on "morals and principles" and not out of selfishness.

John Simmons used a Sept. 5 post to cheer a fellow anti-vaxxer for defending Djokovic:

Men’s tennis star Novak Djokovic is once again in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open after a victory last Saturday, reaching this stage of the tournament for a mind boggling 13th time (tied for second-most ever).

While the Serbian was in his Round of 16 match against Croatian Borna Gojo, New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers was watching from the luxury seats. In addition to being some of the best athletes in their respective sports, both Djokovic and Rodgers faced incredible scrutiny for choosing not to take the COVID-19 vaccine. 

Evidently, not only did Rodgers respect Djokovic’s greatness at his craft, but his courage to stand against vaccine tyranny. As such, when Rodgers posted on his Instagram story about his time at Arthur Ashe stadium, he made sure he reminded his followers about their commonality from standing against the vaccine mandates (a screenshot of this is below).

[...]

Similarly, Rodgers decided to not take the COVID vaccine despite the NFL practically forcing all of its personnel to do so. He also decided to take Ivermectin to fight COVID instead of getting the jab and used his platform to call out the absurdity of America’s COVID mandates and solutions to the “pandemic.”

It’s unfortunate that their examples didn’t inspire more people to take a similar stand. But, we know that at least two famous athletes with a capacity to think critically still exist.

Simmons didn't mention that there's no legitimate evidence that ivermectin works as a treatment for COVID. And, yes, the MRC has similarly praised Rodgers' anti-vaxxer selfishness as a virtue.

In a Sept. 20 post, Simmons whined that Djokovic's anti-vaxxer attitudes gave Rafael Nadal to win more tournaments and pointed out that Djokovic faced the consequences of his anti-vaxx refusal:

The debate over who is the greatest male tennis player is officially over.

This is thanks in large part to Rafael Nadal, the man who won several tournaments in 2022 that Novak Djokovic couldn't compete in, due to Djokovic's refusal to take the COVID vaccine.

Now of course, Djokovic winning his 24th Grand Slam title at the U.S. Open should have categorically ended all debate, but Nadal has also squashed any further discussion by saying Djokovic’s trophy case makes him better than any male to have ever played the sport.

[...]

“I believe that numbers are numbers and statistics are statistics. In that sense, I think he [Djokovic] has better numbers than mine and that is indisputable,” the Spanish legend said.

The Spaniard’s confession is significant because of how he reacted to Djokovic getting deported from Australia in 2022.

However, Djokovic was deported from Australia because he was unvaccinated, giving Nadal the inside track to get the record. Before the tournament began, he seemed to rub salt on Djokovic’s wound by gloating over the Serbian’s situation.

“I think if he wanted, he would be playing here in Australia without a problem,” the Spaniard said on Thursday. “He made his own decisions, and everybody is free to make their own decisions. But then there are some consequences.”

Nadal would end up winning that tournament and the 2022 French Open, putting significant distance between himself and Djokovic. But just over a year later, the GOAT is getting the last laugh, and the admission that Djokovic is the greatest shows Nadal knows he’s been beat. He will have one more year to catch Djokovic before he plans on retiring, but due to Nadal’s injuries and the Serbian’s form, that seems unlikely.

Lesson learned: don’t taunt the greats, even if they seem like they’re down for the count. Once they get back up, they come back with a chip on their shoulder and vengeance on their mind.

Simmons didn't explain how Nadal noting the indisputable fact that Djokovic's actions had consequences was "gloating" or "taunting."

Posted by Terry K. at 3:21 PM EDT

Updated: Thursday, October 12, 2023 3:23 PM EDT

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WorldNetDaily's recent flareup of Obama Derangement Syndrome was helped along when an interview with author James Garrow popped in in the right-wing Jewish magazine Tablet talking about his seven-year-old book on the early career of Barack Obama -- with lots of emphasis on salaciousness in the form of an long-ago letter to an old girlfriend that he dug up in which he supposedly claimed that "I make love to men daily, but in the imagination." WND first republished a Daily Caller article about it, followed by a reprint of a column by charlatan anti-Obama filmmaker Joel Gilbert from right-wing website American Thinker under the titillating headline "Barack Obama's gay fantasies and the gay men in his life."

Obama obsessive Jack Cashill chortled about this and more with co-host Loy Edge on their Aug. 31 podcast. They started by speculating about the accidental death of Obama's chef (which WND tried to falsely blame on Obama), then moved to Seth Rich conspiracy theories, followed by whining that the Obama administration was largely scandal-free. Finally getting around to Garrow's book, Cashiil mildly mocked Garrow for finding former girlfriends to talk to: "I thought that he was making them up entirely," Referencing the "composite girlfriends" Obama used in his memoir to protect their identities, Edge sneered, "It kind of sounded like a 12-year-old guy making up what his girlfriend was like." Cashill then salivated over the letter; Edge mocked Obama for talking about it to a girlfriend. Cashill then complained that one of his own Obama conspiracy theories wasn't getting mentioned, huffing that "Garrow knows that Obama and Bill Ayers are tight, and yet in his book he refuses to acknowledge or even mention -- even to discredit -- my theory that Bill Ayers was the one helping Obama with 'Dreams From My Father.'" Cashill didn't mention that actual professional literary analysts debunked him.

Cashill then grumbled that Garrow said "hostile critics" like him insisted that a poem a teenage Obama wrote was about Frank Marshall Davis, not his grandfather as non-Obama-hating people believe, going on to rant: "OK, the poem is transparently about the guy that Obama and all his buddies call 'Pops.' If he wsa writing about his grandfather, he'd call it 'Gramps.' Come on, it's in your face. Now, Garrow knows I'm right, but like so many other authors at that level, they refuse to acknowledge work done by people at another level."

Edge later joined in ranting "I knew exactly what he was" from the beginning and that "We knew stuff about him that would have gotten him in prison, let alone not elected before the election." Cashill then went off on the story of Obama's birth and what role his father played in it and his life, and Edge joined him in whining that the media supposedly didn't dig deeply enough into it.

They concluded by speculating about why this is all resurfacing now. Cashill claimed that Garrow says Obama's presidency was a "total failure, adding: "With the possiblity of a Michelle Obama candidacy looming, this may be Garrow's way of putting a knot in that plan. ...  Obama's afraid of him, and Garrow says this openly. He's afraid of what Garrow knows." They then deduced that the Clintons may be working to kneecap the Obamas.

This was followed by the resurfacing of Larry Sinclair, who got some right-wing press in 2008 -- much of it from WND -- when he claimed to have a sexual encounter and done drugs with Obama way back when. Never mind that Sinclair never had any credibility; he failed polygraph tests administered by a right-wing website (which even WND noted), has a long criminal record and couldn't back up his claims at a press conference he held (then was arrested for another crime afterwards). Joe Kovacs teased the interview in an Aug. 30 article:

Tucker Carlson is now teasing a potentially explosive interview with a man purporting to be Barack Obama's homosexual lover when the former president was a state senator in Illinois.

During an appearance on "The Adam Carolla Show," Carlson dug up the case of Larry Sinclair, who was ridiculed by many in the national news media after allegations he smoked crack cocaine and had sex with Obama in 1999.

"In 2008, it became really clear that Barack Obama had been having sex with men and smoking crack," Carlson began.

"A guy came forward, Larry Sinclair, and said 'I'll sign an affidavit' and he did, 'I'll do a lie detector' and he did," Carlson added. "'I smoked crack with Barack Obama and had sex with him.' Well, that was obviously true."

[...]

When Carolla asked if Carlson believed the allegations actually transpired, Tucker responded: "The Larry Sinclair story? That definitely happened. Oh, for sure. I talked to Larry Sinclair about it. Definitely it happened."

"Larry Sinclair has been in and out of prison 40 years ago, he's got a criminal record by definition and he's poor, he's got a disordered life, he's missing a tooth.

"I think he has a record of deception but this story, if you listen to it in detail, is clearly true."

Kovacs hyped the interview again in a Sept. 5 article:

Tucker Carlson's highly anticipated interview with Larry Sinclair, the man purporting to be Barack Obama's homosexual lover when the former president was a state senator in Illinois in 1999, is now scheduled for broadcast Wednesday evening at 6 p.m. Eastern on X, formerly Twitter.

n Tuesday, Carlson posted numerous video clips from the discussion, as Sinclair goes into details of crack cocaine use and sexual relations with Obama.

[...]

Regarding most of the national media's suppression of Sinclair's allegations during Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, Carlson said: "The guy's running for president and credible information comes out that he's smoking crack having sex with dudes. That seems like a story."

Sinclair answered: "Well, it would be a story if the media really cared about telling people the truth."

In neither article did Kovacs inform his readers that Sinclair has been thoroughly discredited. When the interview was made public, WND put it on its website.

Posted by Terry K. at 1:03 AM EDT

Updated: Thursday, October 12, 2023 1:08 AM EDT

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While it was busy defending Ron DeSantis over his revisionist black history curriculum in Florida schools, the Media Research Center's DeSantis Defense Brigade studiously ignored other controversies involving the Florida governor:

• DeSantis made a weird, racially tinged remark about basketball players.
• The puppet board DeSantis installed to govern the land where Disney World is located voted to defund the police, slashing $8 million from the district's law enforcement budget.
• DeSantis campaign workers created inflammatory pro-DeSantis videos intended to hype his campaign which were then laundered through anonymous accounts that would post the videos. One video featured a version of the Sonnenrad, a symbol of Nazi Germany.

The MRC didn't tell its readers about any of this, of course -- the DeSantis Defense Brigade had other things to complain about, like trying to shoot down another negative story, about how DeSantis loves to travel via private planes rather than flying commercial. Asa Schau was the designated defender (and whataboutism-hurler) in a July 25 post:

Monday morning’s CNN News Central featured an interview with Daily Beast columnist Matt Lewis, who co-host John Berman somehow labeled as a “conservative writer.” In promoting Lewis's new book Filthy Rich Politicians, Berman did not discuss the Biden Burisma bribes.

Instead, they decried Governor Ron DeSantis's preference for “private planes” to travel on the campaign trail as proof of a “lifestyle” that DeSantis has led as a result of his “high-profile political platform.”

Berman introduced the subject by quoting a New York Times article about the DeSantis campaign’s recent financial troubles, and how these may be related to DeSantis’s preference “to travel by private planes” instead of commercially:

[...]

This criticism of modern American politicians and their financial habits is not unmerited, but CNN doesn't use this as a general principle, but as an anti-Republican argument. 

To illustrate how he thought DeSantis should try to rectify his allegedly sticky financial situation, Lewis brought up liberal media favorite John McCain, who “was flying commercial” to make campaign stops and go to fundraising events, and thus was apparently “able to turn it around” with his then-failing primary campaign in 2007.

A July 27 post by Clay Waters complained that the New York Times reported on the less-than-stellar record on COVID in Florida:

Sunday’s lead New York Times story by Sharon LaFraniere, Patricia Mazzei, and Albert Sun, “ was a retrospective hit piece for the 2024 presidential race. The trio of reporters reached back before current culture war controversies to focus on Florida’s Republican governor-presidential candidate and the alleged deadly medical malpractice he performed by discouraging vaccinations (not true) during Covid’s 2021 “Delta Wave.”

Digging into the numbers reveals Florida did perfectly well against Covid, while ensuring freedom of action and movements for its citizens. Interestingly, “masks,” which were once supposed to be our ticket out, are only mentioned once in this 3,200-word story.

[...]

The accompanying charts were staggeringly unconvincing: “Vaccination Rates From January to July 2021” showed the percentage of over-65 Americans “fully vaccinated” topping off at just over 80%, with Florida tracking with the national average after previously leading the pack. But there was always going to be a hard-core group of “never-vaxxers” in America, Florida residents or not. The chart shows Florida seniors…at the national average for vaccination in July 2021. Scandalous!

Waters didn't mention that among the "hard-core group of 'never-vaxxers'" is DSAntis' own state surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo.

When the article noted that 80,000 Florida residents have died of COVID, Waters went into spin mode: "The pandemic left more than 108,000 Californians and more than 80,000 New York state residents dead. Where are the 3,000-word condemnations of California Gov. Gavin Newsom and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo? Oh right, they’re Democrats." By focusing on raw numbers, Waters obscured the fact that the per capita death rate in Florida is higher than in California and New York.

Alex Christy spent a July 28 post complaining that an awkward exchange between DeSantis and child on the campaign trail got attention:

There is something about political figures and food that CNN Inside Politics host Dana Bash finds intensely fascinating and worthy of deep discussion. On Friday, the subject of discussion was Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis’s interaction on the campaign trail with a child about his Icee and what the impact it will have on his campaign.

During a larger discussion of the state of the DeSantis Campaign and its attempt to reboot itself, Bash introduced a clip of DeSantis, “There was a clip that I think probably is fair to say went sort of viral yesterday... In our world, which is the world that matters on Inside Politics. Ron DeSantis on the campaign trail was on that bus tour that Jessica was talking about interacting with a child about an Icee.”

[...]

After the video, senior political analyst Nia-Malika Henderson declared that “I don't know what's more awkward there. The ‘good to see you’ part to a child or the, you know, comments about the calorie count of an Icee. The problem that Ron DeSantis has, and we've been talking about it endlessly, doesn't have a lot of charisma, he's very awkward on the trail.”

She also insisted that, “sometimes he comes across as a humorless robot. And in a place like Iowa, in a place like New Hampshire where you're going to be greeting all sorts of people from kids with Icees to grandmas with Icees, he's got some work to do. Listen, I think the average small town mayor is probably better at sort of the nitty-gritty of politics than Ron DeSantis is. And we're sort of seeing that over and over in clips like this.”

Henderson never explained what is so awkward about telling a child that it is “good to see you.” While Henderson may be suggesting that DeSantis sugar shamed a child for eating a cold desert in the middle of the summer, other possible explanations include that DeSantis, as a father of young children, is used to keeping an eye on his kids’ sugar intake. Another possibility is that this whole thing is no big deal and CNN needs to make mountains out of molehills in order to fill time.

And Christy filled time at work by writing about this time-filler.

Waters returned for a July 28 post whining htat Christiane Amanpour's show "brought on left-wing New York magazine journalist Rebecca Traister and Democratic strategist Joe Trippi for a long conversation harping on the evils of the racist, misogynistic presidential candidate, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis (almost as bad as Trump!) and reelecting Joe Biden, without the slightest of journalistic nods toward balance," moving swiftly to whataboutism:

Strangely, there was no mention of Vice President Kamala Harris, perhaps indicating that even the press realizes the American people have low confidence regarding her as a prospective president. There was also nothing about Hunter Biden’s expanding list of scandals, many of which touch his father the president himself.

IN a July 31 post, Nicholas Fondacaro was still whining about criticism of Florida's black history standards as he also whined that it was pointed out that DeSantis was floundering in the polls:

A week ago, ABC’s pushed Vice President Kamala Harris’s BIG LIE that Florida schools were going to teach students that slavery was a good thing. On Monday, Disney’s attack dogs on the show took things to a disgusting and hypocritical low as faux-conservative Ana Navarro minimized the brutality of slavery when she suggested Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) was getting a “beating” like a slave in the polls.

In a segment where they touted Republican presidential candidate Will Hurd attacking a Republican crowd in Iowa, Navarro was irate that former President Trump was still doing well in the polls. “[H]e's got over 50 percent. He's at 54 percent, and there's 200 other Republicans running, and you've got Trump at 54 percent,” she huffed.

She then turned her ire to DeSantis and mocked his poll numbers:

Ron DeSantis was supposed to be plan B, and he's ended up being plan bad. Very, very bad. He's at 17 percent. That's over 30 points under Donald Trump who's got two indictments and possibly a third and fourth before this month is over.

Navarro, a failed political strategist, suggested he should abandon updates to Florida’s black history curriculum by pushing the Vice President’s BIG LIE. She also used an analogy to compare the “beating” he was getting in the polls to that of the slaves and hoped he would “learn some skills” from it:

Again, the curridulum specifically states that slaves learned skills while enslaved that they used later in life -- which is arguably a take on saying that "slavery was a good thing," making it not a BIG LIE at all.

Posted by Terry K. at 9:56 PM EDT

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When he's not fluffing Donald Trump, perpetually wrong Newsmax pundit Dick Morris continues to feed the right-wing content machine with the usual complaints about President Biden and related subjects over the past few months:

• Dick Morris to Newsmax: Biden Social Media Ruling 'Most Important'
• Dick Morris to Newsmax: Immunity Biggest Factor in Hunter Deal
• Dick Morris to Newsmax: Hunter Plea Judge Said, 'Not in My Courtroom'
• Dick Morris to Newsmax: Biden Beholden to 'Chinese Masters'
• Morris to Newsmax: 10 Percent of Biden Voters Have Buyer's Remorse

Morris has also written the kind of Biden-bashing opinions that keep him employed at Newsmax. He used an Aug. 3 column to cheer how the right-wing attacks on Biden are hurting his favorability ratings, while Trump is allegedly unscathed:

Trump has acquired more antibodies against personal negatives than his opponent has ever had.

Neither man can claim to be unscathed by the charges against him. Whether they are aired in a courtroom or a hearing room makes little difference. They are both hurting.

But Trump and his supporters are more accustomed to the pain of hearing their candidate defamed and slandered. They read it every day in the media.

The charges against Biden, on the other hand, are new. Voters have always suspected that Trump would do anything to win and, if they vote for him anyway, largely forgive him his take-no-prisoners attitude. But the attacks on Biden and his family accusing him of bribery are relatively new.

Morris similarly complained in an Aug. 11 column: "Unless and until Biden is under actual impeachment by a vote of the U.S. House of Representatives, it will be impossible for the Biden scandals to get equal time."

Morris used a Sept. 5 column to tout a Biden-bashing poll that he doesn't disclose was conducted by Trump's election pollster:

In a McLaughlin survey of 1,000 likely voters, taken on July 25, 2023, 10% of those who voted for Biden in 2020 have now switched and would vote for Trump today.

Buyer’s remorse.

By contrast, only two percent of those who voted for Trump would now switch and back Biden instead.

The eight point differential between those who switch to Trump and those who switch to Biden accounts for all of Trump’s margin over Biden in the poll.

[...]

Biden's record as president is now set in history as an all-time failure and whatever hope he had that Trump’s vote would crater under the impact of four indictments now is clearly illusory.

Trump is on the road to victory. Biden is on track to oblivion.

Morris spent a Sept. 25 column claiming that a single bad poll means that Biden should drop out of thte race:

After working with him in the Clinton White House, if there is one Democrat I know inside out, it is my former colleague George Stephanopoulos. The recent ABC/Washington Post poll showing Trump 9 points ahead of Biden bears all of his fingerprints.

After years of seeing polls deliberately skewed against Trump to discourage people from backing or donating to him, we now have the spectacle of a poll biased for Trump, likely designed to force Biden out of the race.

Stephanopoulos would never have permitted ABC to go with a poll that shows Biden losing by 10 points unless he wanted to send a message to his party: Dump Biden.

Morris didn't mention that respected political analyst Larry Sabato called the poll a "laughable" outlier.

Posted by Terry K. at 6:28 PM EDT

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Like the Media Research Center and Newsmax, WorldNetDaily tried to manufacture right-wing outrage over President Biden purportedly saying "no comment" regarding the Maui wildfires -- while censoring the fact that nobody actually heard him say it and the biased reporter who first made the claim, who is employed by the right-wing anti-Biden British newspaper Daily Mail, has said his account was based on the opinion of lip-readers, not anyone hearing the words. James Zumwalt was first up in his Aug. 16 column complaining about the "twit parade" that supposedly appeared after thet wildfires:

While departing the beach in Delaware Sunday, Biden was asked by the media about the rising death toll in Maui. His response was, "No comment." This from presidential candidate Biden who in 2020 claimed, "Empathy matters. Compassion matters. We have to reach out to one another and heal this country – and that's what I'll do as president." Apparently, such empathy and compassion does not apply while one is lounging on the beach.

Of the three twit parade members, much more was to be expected of Biden. He supposedly is the leader we all should be looking up to in dark times.

Editor Joseph Farah weighed in as well in his Aug. 17 column:

A beautiful town in Hawaii left in ruins. At least 100 dead, but the toll will rise considerably as they search for more remains in the rubble and ash.

After three days, when asked about the tragedy, Joe Biden issued the terse and insensitive words: "No comment." He was laughing when he said it.

I thought of him looking at his watch on the day the last soldiers killed in the Afghanistan debacle were brought home. I also thought about the fact he never even went to comfort the people after the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.

He's a class act, isn't he?

Farah added: "Say what you will about Trump, but he deeply loves all the good people of the USA. He put out that statement despite the fact he probably has no chance of winning the deep blue state of Hawaii – ever."

Barbara Simpson served up her own rant in an Aug. 18 column:

But for me, the reaction of the president to what has happened is a crime in itself. During one of Biden's contacts with reporters while he was in Delaware, his response to a reporter who asked if he was considering a trip to Maui to see the fire horror, was: "We're looking at it."

Gee, that's consoling. He's "looking at it." What does that mean? What warmth and concern for the losses.

Another reporter asked Biden a similar question, as he was on the beach in Delaware. His response: "No comment."

It also reported that when talking to another reporter about the situation, he seemed not to remember the name of the island and referred to it only as "the one where you see on television all of the time."

That should give no comfort to Americans who assume their president is kept up to date on what is happening in his country from national security people. Now they know that he gets his information (or lack of it) from television.

God help us.

None of these columnists mentioned the relevant fact that the right-wing reporter making the claim never heard him say those words.

WND also republished articles from elsewhere pushing the same bogus claim:

• Tulsi Gabbard unloads on Biden's response to Hawaiian fire deaths
• Congress may probe Biden's Maui response, McCarthy suggests
• Hawaiian business savages Joe Biden for belittling the destruction of Maui

Farah whined further about the purported comment in his Aug. 22 column:

It took Joe Biden two weeks to make it to Hawaii after the devastating wildfires that likely will have killed upwards of 1,000 people as some 850 are still missing.

It was not a good day for him, after he compared the disaster to his own apocryphal kitchen fire in his Delaware home in 2004.

Biden was met with obscene catcalls as his motorcade passed rows of disgruntled residents who had received $700 checks after losing their homes.

You might recall clueless Joe issued only a "no comment" on the tragedy a week earlier. A week after that he forgot he had come to Maui, repeatedly referring the fires as occurring on "the Big Island."

WND also published an Aug. 23 syndicated column by Ben Shapiro asserting that Biden "is a narcissist, not an empath" that claimed "Biden vacationed in Delaware on the beach, telling reporters he had "no comment" on the situation; he then jet-set off to Lake Tahoe before finally heading to Lahaina." Neither mentioned that nobody actually heard the words they accuse Biden of saying.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:58 PM EDT

Updated: Wednesday, October 11, 2023 1:00 PM EDT

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