New Article: WorldNetDaily, Serial Liar
Topic: WorldNetDaily
Building on its long history of lying about Democratic presidential candidates, WND is now making up things about Barack Obama. Read more >>

CNS Uncritically Repeats Anti-Gay Attack
Topic: CNSNews.com

An Aug. 6 CNSNews.com article by Melanie Hunter-Omar repeats accusations from a "conservative group" that a bill in the California legislature to official designate Harvey Milk Day -- as the article states, "the first openly homosexual person to be elected to public office in a major U.S. city" who was "assassinated by former Board of Supervisor Dan White at San Francisco City Hall" -- "requires public schools to have an official 'Gay Day.'"

But not only does Humter-Omar not permit any supporter of Harvey Milk Day, she offers no further detail about why such a day would be offensive to the "conservative group" in question, the Campaign for Children and Families. Despite the alarmist claim in the headline that the bill would "force schools to honor" Milk, the bill merely designates that day as "as having special significance in public school and educational institutions and encourages those entities to conduct suitable commemorative exercises on that date."

Indeed, the only possible interpretation the article offers is that the CCF believes that a gay man should receive any official recognition whatsoever.

As we've noted, CCF has a history of anti-gay activism -- they think that protecting gay students under hate-crime laws equals "promoting homosexuality" -- and CNS has previously forwarded CCF anti-gay talking points without rebuttal.

Zeifman Sees Dead People, Puts Words In Their Mouths
Topic: Newsmax

The last time we saw Newsmax Democrat Jerry Zeifman, he couldn't keep his Hillary Clinton smears straight. Now, in an Aug. 6 Newsmax column, he reveals perhaps too much about his inner life:

On Feb. 22, 2008, I published an article on www.zeifman.com about a dream I had in which Eleanor Roosevelt decried the pandering by a majority of the Congressional Black Caucus to white political leaders.

Sadly, he continues:

On the night the House recessed for a month in a stalemate over high oil prices, Mrs. Roosevelt came again to me in a dream.

Our conversation follows.

Oh, my. And yes, Zeifman goes on to do exactly that -- and it's funny how ol' Eleanor sounds a lot like Zeifman and has strangely detailed knowledge of events that happened long after her death on subjects she was not generally known to have expertise on during her lifetime:

Roosevelt: In 1969, British Petroleum discovered oil on the Alaskan north slope. Soon thereafter it acquired Standard Oil of Ohio (Sohio) and operates in Alaska under that company's name. By 1982 Sohio's American operations provided almost 80 percent of the BP world wide profits.

BP now enjoys the advantages of OPEC's price fixing, which under our anti-trust laws would be a felonious conspiracy if carried out in the United States. American companies would be illegal under our anti-trust laws.

Also by closing down its American refineries and pursuing OPEC's more profitable price-fixed end of the oil market, BP has now become the world's biggest speculator and "spot" trader in oil futures.

Um, OK. But what Zeifman -- er, Roosevelt really wants to talk about is contemporary politics:

Zeifman: Are you suggesting that Maxine Waters has no partisan motives in advocating the take over of oil companies?

Roosevelt: I am not unaware that she, like Barack Obama and most Black Caucus members, are partisan demonizers of the Bush presidency. But she should have a right, like everyone else in government, to have her recommendations considered on their merits. I am also dismayed that her detractors are assailing her with such epithets as "marxist" and "commie" — which were also used by opponents of both Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt to disparage their anti-monopoly policies.

And since Eleanor is acting as Zeifman's parrot in his weirdly fevered dreams -- he had best lay off the pizza and Jagermeister shots before bedtime, it would seem -- she certainly wouldn't be endorsing a Democrat for president:

Although the current media regards anti-trust enforcement as a left-wing Democratic policy the truth is that the greatest opponent of monopolies in our history was Theodore Roosevelt. Known as the "trust-buster," he was the first president to successfully invoke the Sherman Antitrust Act against international cartels. He was also responsible for indicting 45 corporations for violation of anti-trust laws.

I am confident that, as president, John McCain, who proudly describes himself as a "progressive Theodore Roosevelt Republican," will have the spine to enter into a nonpartisan coalition to nationalize domestic oil production as a means of preserving our national security and environment.

Er, is that even actually an endorsement? It is Zeifman's dream, after all, so it must be.

Huston Channels Stephen Colbert
Topic: NewsBusters

The folks at NewsBusters are bound and determined to serve as poster children for Stephen Colbert's maxim that reality has a well-known liberal bias. In an Aug. 6 post, Warner Todd Huston throws yet another hissy fit, this time over the Associated Press describing Dick Cheney as "unpopular":

So, I ask you, does "unpopular Cheney" sound more like opinion than it does simple news reporting?

Certainly we can face facts that the liberal press has succeeded in pillorying Vice President Cheney since almost the minute he stepped into the VP Mansion at the United States Naval Observatory. It is, therefore, a fact that Cheney has a low approval rating. But it seems to me that the headline branding Cheney "unpopular" is somewhat unseemly and opinionated as opposed to newsworthy.

That's right -- even though Huston concedes it's a fact that Cheney is unpopular (but somehow thinks Cheney has done nothing to contribute to said unpopularity), it's "opinionated" to mention that fact in a news story.

That's what passes for media criticism at NewsBusters.

WND Article Debunked -- By the MRC
Topic: WorldNetDaily

It's unusual for one ConWeb component to publicly correct another, but that's what WorldNetDaily has found itself on the business end of.

An Aug. 5 WND article by Chelsea Schilling asserted:

Is CBS showing bias toward Barack Obama?

The "Late Show with David Letterman" has removed a spoof on Obama from website archives but opted to keep a "Top Ten" list ripping John McCain from the previous evening – and show representatives are denying any knowledge of the missing clip.

Schilling's conspiratorial musings are shot down in surprisingly direct fashion by the Media Research Center's Brent Baker in an Aug. 6 NewsBusters post:

Despite repeated e-mails NewsBusters received late last week apparently spurred by mis-informed postings elsewhere, I've hesitated, since I considered it so ridiculous, to address the allegation that CBS or David Letterman staffers caved to pressure and removed from the Late Show with David Letterman Web site a “Top Ten” list critical of Barack Obama, the “Top Ten Signs Barack Obama is Overconfident.” But then today World Net Daily put the issue back in play with an article which speculated:

Is CBS showing bias toward Barack Obama? The "Late Show with David Letterman" has removed a spoof on Obama from website archives but opted to keep a "Top Ten" list ripping John McCain from the previous evening -- and show representatives are denying any knowledge of the missing clip.

 

As a David Letterman fan who has watched his show nearly every night since 1982 -- though I have been disappointed by his recent left-wing political rants on the show -- I can provide a simple explanation which involves no effort to hide the list: The list, prepared for, and presented on, the Tuesday, July 29 show was, as happens many times each year, edited from the program because later interview segments with Kevin Costner and/or Bob Sarlatte ran long. The purpose of the Late Show site is to post highlights from the show and since Letterman's reading of it did not air on the program as broadcast on CBS the list should not have been posted. Yet it was put up, along with video of Letterman reading it (hence why there is YouTube video of it that makes it appear the list did air on the show), by mistake. When that error was realized the list, and matching video, were removed -- as they should have been.

It is not unusual -- I'd guess about once a week -- for a “Top Ten” list which Letterman plugs as coming up after a commercial break to not air. Sometimes that's because he sees the final version of the list during the break and rejects it; other times he reads it but it is cut for time since killing it in post-production is a quick way to reduce the show length by 90 seconds to two minutes without having to chop up an interview session.

Ouch -- WND criticized by one of its own (though Baker fails to properly identify WND as a right-wing organization). How utterly unreliable and non-factual must WND's "reporting" be (and oh, it is) when its fellow ideologues feel compelled to issue smackdowns?

Aaron Klein Anti-Obama Agenda Watch
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Aaron Klein's 48th anti-Obama article is yet another guilt-by-association piece, blaming Obama for "racist, anti-Semitic and anti-Israel propaganda" in community blogs on Obama's website, even though he concedes that "The Obama campaign does not monitor all blog material but says it removes offending posts brought to the attention of site administrators" -- and even admits that "Several offensive postings on the Obama site previously noted by WND and some Internet blogs have been removed by the Obama website staff."

Klein claims that "Obama's campaign did not return a WND e-mail request for comment before press time," but there's no indication he went through proper channels to report the offending content before penning yet another attack article for WND.

Of course, there are Obama death threats on the WND site, but Klein probably doesn't want to talk about that. 

CNS Balance Watch
Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com's sense of editorial balance remains as skewed as ever: An Aug. 5 article by Michael Gryboski and Kaitlynn Riely featuring Democrat Nancy Pelosi's criticism of the Republicans' oil drilling plan provided an opportunity for Republicans to respond, while another Aug. 5 article by Penny Starr featuring Republicans' calls to reconvene Congress to repeal a ban on offshore drilling has no Democratic response.

Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch
Topic: WorldNetDaily

One of many sayings I remember from my grandmother is, "If the hiss doesn't tell you it's a snake, then the fact that it slithers on its belly in the dirt should." And to that point, if the company Barack Obama has kept (read the dirt he has aligned himself with) doesn't tell you he is a Marxist reparationist, then the words from his mouth, i.e., his hiss, certainly should.

-- Mychal Massie, Aug. 5 WorldNetDaily column

NewsBusters Misleads on Obama, Tires
Topic: NewsBusters

An Aug. 4 NewsBusters post by Ken Shepherd referenced "a ludicrous statement by Sen. Barack Obama wherein the presumptive Democratic nominee suggested that properly inflating tires would eliminate the need to drill for more domestic oil," adding, "the Illinois senator didn't just echo some public service announcment about how properly inflated tires improve fuel economy. What Obama critics are making light of is this recent comment from last week where he suggested it does much, much more. It would eliminate our need to drill for more oil."

Shepherd then portrays the remark as inaccurate by claiming that Obama was referring to all new domestic drilling, citing statistics from a right-wing blogger that included possible oil finds on the outer continental shelf, ANWR and oil shale to wildly skew the numbers.

But ABC's Jake Tapper points out that, in context, Obama was referring to output in currently restricted areas of the OCS, and, in fact, proper tire inflation and tune-ups could, in fact, save the estimated daily output from restricted OCS areas.

Further, in suggesting that Obama's statement is the total extent of his energy policy, Shepherd joins WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah in ignoring other policy items Obama mentioned during that speech, as well as Obama's entire detailed energy policy.

Newsmax Falsely Portrays 'Obama's Chicago'
Topic: Newsmax

The promotional headline on Newsmax's front page for part of the day on Aug. 4 (a screen shot of which is here) read, "Obama's Chicago Named Worst 'Nanny State' in U.S." it was accompanied by a photo of Obama and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley that stated, "Presidential candidate Barack Obama wants to bring Chicago-style politics to Washington."

In fact, Obama never served as an elected official in the city of Chicago (he represented a portion of Chicago in the Illinois state senate), so it's misleading, if not entirely false, to refer to "Obama's Chicago."

Further, the article being promoted by the misleading headline and photo makes no mention whatsoever of Obama.

Aaron Klein Anti-Obama Agenda Watch
Topic: WorldNetDaily

For his 47th anti-Obama article, WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein goes spelunking through right-wing blogs again and latches onto ... Pamela Geller, who runs the Atlas Shrugs blog and is virulently anti-Obama -- currently joining Klein's Obama-hating buddies at Israel Insider in embracing the fake-Obama-birth-certificate conspiracy -- as well as (like Klein) a sympathizer of right-wing Israeli extremists.

Anyway, the blog tidbit that Klein is trying to make a big deal out of this time is a claim that "Palestinian brothers inside the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip are listed in government election filings as having donated $29,521.54 to Sen. Barack Obama's campaign." Klein goes on to assert "The contributions also raise numerous questions about the Obama campaign's lax online donation form, which apparently allows for the possibility of foreign contributions."

But as Klein goes on to note, the Palestinian brothers falsely claimed to be living in Georgia on their donation form, which means the brothers are committing fraud, not Obama. And Klein does not outline any difference between Obama's campaign and John McCain's campaign in "allowing for the possibility of foreign contributions" in online donations.

Further, Klein states that there are "prohibitions on receiving contributions from foreigners and guidelines against accepting more than $2,300 from one individual during a single election" but not that there are exceptions. For instance, as Klein was pushing his daily Obama-bash, Talking Points Memo was detailing how "Ten senior Hess Corporation executives and/or members of the Hess family each gave $28,500 to the joint RNC-McCain fundraising committee, just days after McCain reversed himself to favor offshore drilling, according to Federal Election Commission reports." That's apparently legal (if unmentioned by Klein). Further, because Klein doesn't note exactly where the brothers' money went or what, if anything, they got for it -- the brothers did claim to have purchased T-shirts from the campaign -- there is not enough information to determine the legality of the donations.

Finally, it's highly unlikely, despite Klein's suggestion to the contrary, that the Obama campaign knowingly broke the law in allowing over-the-limit donations from a foreign national.

This is only a half-reported story. Despite the Obama campaign not returning his calls -- given that he has a record of hurling distorted, murky and outright false attacks against Obama, why would they? -- he went with it anyway, solely in order to make Obama look bad, even though he can't actually back all of it up.

Kincaid Still Claiming Obama Is Manchurian Candidate
Topic: Accuracy in Media

In an Aug. 4 Accuracy in Media column bashing the Associated Press for not using the word "communist" often enough to describe Obama "mentor" Frank Marshall Davis, Cliff Kincaid doubles down on his evidence-free assertion that Barack Obama is a secret commie and, thus, a Manchurian candidate:

Not surprisingly, AP leaves many major questions unanswered. The wire service notes that Frank Marshall Davis is referred to in Obama’s book Dreams From My Father “only as Frank.”

But why? What does Obama have to say about this curious omission? Could it have something to do with the fact that, by the time Obama wrote his book, he knew that Davis was a Communist? And that he deliberately covered this up? Or did he know it earlier?

This is the key question: What did Obama know and when did he know it?

Why didn’t AP ask this question? Was it afraid of the answer? Or did the campaign not want to comment?

There are more questions: Other than what was reported in Obama’s book, and by Davis’s friends and associates, what was the nature of the relationship between the two of them? Did Davis ever try to recruit Obama into the communist cause? Did Obama leave this out of his book, too?

[...]

Which of course raises the disturbing questions that must be asked:

- Did Davis recruit Obama?

- Was Obama, like Davis, Bridges and Robeson, ever a secret CPUSA member?

[...]

The blatant fraud and deception in the AP story may reflect thinking at the highest levels of the Obama campaign that, if the complete truth about the Obama-Davis relationship were made known, the candidate would be sunk. They must understand that Obama’s baggage would prevent him from getting a security clearance in the U.S. Government (none is required for a presidential candidate).

As might be expected, Kincaid mentions nothing about the questions Mark Davis has raised about Kincaid's previous attacks on Frank Marshall Davis -- indeed, Davis weighs in again on the comments here, documenting a new misrepresentation by Kincaid.

Activist Linked to Obama Not So Extreme After All
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Among the numerous guilt-by-association attacks WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein has hurled at Barack Obama was that Obama served on the board of a charitable organization that "granted funding to a controversial Arab group that mourns the establishment of Israel as a "catastrophe" and supports intense immigration reform." That group was headed by "Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi."

Apparently, Khalidi is not as extreme as Klein made him out to be. From an Aug. 3 Newsmax article by Ken Timmerman:

Since 2004, The State Department has provided $340,000 in taxpayer dollars to the Palestinian American Research Center (PARC), co-chaired by Columbia University professor Rashid Khalili [sic], who served as a spokesman for late Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat at a time when the PLO was still considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.

While both Klein and Timmerman made an attempt to play up Kahlidi's purported extremist views -- and Klein never mentioned Khalidi's State Department funding at all -- neither offered any evidence that the money given to his organizations by either the Obama-linked group or the State Department was used for any extremist causes.

Further, Timmerman's article -- which specifically calls out former Bush adviser Karen Hughes as awarding money to "radical Islamist organizations," pretty surprising from the pro-GOP Newsmax -- cites Steven Emerson as the source of its allegations; Timmerman describes Emerson as a "respected terrorism expert." Er, not so much.

Farah's Dishonest Pro-Drilling Campaign
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah has been yet another mini-crusade of late, trying to get people to pressure Congress into dropping all restrictions on drilling for oil in the U.S.. From a July 20 WND article:

"I want to bring Congress to its knees," he says. "I want to melt down their phones. I want to flood their e-mail boxes. I want to hold them as political hostages. The ransom demand is to unleash the free market to begin exploring and pumping domestic crude oil and getting it to market as fast as possible. We've got 75 days to make our voices heard. Let's make history by bringing this recalcitrant body of elitists into compliance with the will of the people and the rule of law."

[...]

"We're running out of time," Farah says. "If we let these rascals, these scoundrels, leave town before they lift all their ridiculous bans and restrictions on drilling for domestic oil, this country is headed for a major recession. Even worse, we'll head into a new year and a new presidency with the Washington elite thinking they put one over on us again."

Farah goes on to call it a "bipartisan, non-partisan movement." He's lying, of course; he's reading from Republican talking points, and he's targeting a Democratically-controlled Senate. Indeed, Farah flip-flopped just two days later in an article attacking Democrats for not lifting the offshore drilling moratorium, stating that he targeting "particularly the Democratic leadership" with his activism.

Farah's true partisan motivation has been clear ever since:

• A July 24 WND article attacked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
• A July 30 article smeared Barack Obama by falsely portraying a call to keep tires properly inflated to improve gas mileage as the extent of Obama's energy policy.

In all of his attacks, though, Farah has yet to offer any sort of fact-based rebuttal to arguments against expanded offshore drilling -- specifically that oil companies are not currently drilling on millions of acres of offshore land they already have drilling rights to, and that expanded domestic drilling would have a negligible impact on prices.

In other words, Farah's crusade is not just dishonest but mindless as well. And for what? To sell a few overpriced bumper stickers? Hey, he is a businessman, after all.

WND Now Selling Lame Anti-McCain Sticker
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Months after it released its first bumper sticker attacking Democratic presidential candidates, WorldNetDaily has finally gotten around to selling one critical of Republican John McCain -- an apparent attempt to cancel out some of the disparity between Joseph Farah's "none of the above" rhetoric and his website's refusal to criticize McCain on its news pages to the extent it does Barack Obama.

Thus, we now have the "McCain Not Able" bumper sticker. However, the utter lameness of the design and the obtuseness of the slogan seems to guarantee that it won't sell well, at least in comparison to its "NObama" sticker, which wins points for pithiness if not originality.

So, how will Farah explain away the fact that his own managing editor, David Kupelian, has endorsed McCain, thus making his "none of the above" pledge utterly disingenuous?

And speaking of disingenuous, Farah writes the following in his Aug. 2 column:

I am serious when I tell you this is the most patriotic vote you can cast this year.

I'm so serious, I have written a book called "None of the Above." I didn't do it to make money. If you want to make money on a book, you don't write one that will be outdated Nov. 5. You don't give yourself a time window of only four months to make sales. And you don't target a market of Americans probably limited to no more than 10 percent to 20 percent of the public.

But that's what I did.

I did it because I am serious about this campaign.

Actually, writing a book to take advantage of a presidential campaign is exactly what you do if you want to make money -- otherwise, there wouldn't be so many books coming out regarding the 2008 election (see Corsi, Jerome). Farah is a businessman who runs a publishing division, after all, and he's not doing that out of the goodness of his heart. Does anyone really believe that Farah does not hope to make some money off his book?