Kessler Whines That His Obama-Wright Smears Didn't Get Saturation Coverage Topic: Newsmax
Ronald Kessler uses his Nov. 3 Newsmax column to complain that the media was "ignoring their obligation to report the news" by not giving what he considered to be sufficient attention to Barack Obama's relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright:
I began writing stories about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s mentor and former pastor, Jan. 7 with “Barack Obama’s Racist Church.”
[...]
During the next two and a half months, I wrote more than half a dozen stories disclosing new information about Obama and Wright.
[...]
Meanwhile, I sent the Newsmax stories to dozens of people I know in the print and broadcast media. In contrast to their interest in Joe the plumber’s background, no media outlet would touch the Wright stories.
Unmentioned by Kessler: He has long ago squandered any journalistic credibility he might have had through his biased (and occasionally creepy) opining for a blatantly partisan "news" outlet, and his entreaties to other news organizations were rightly ignored as the partisan motivations of a political activist.
Kessler concludes: "The media’s continuing coverup of Obama’s associations with radical hate-mongers like Wright is a shameful chapter in the history of American journalism." If he's so concerned about such associations, why doesn't he expose and denounce his own -- and his employer's -- associations with unrepentant domestic terrorist G. Gordon Liddy?
NewsBusters Misleads on Troopergate Probe Topic: NewsBusters
A Nov. 3 NewsBusters post by Terry Trippany promoted an Alaska Personnel Board investigation of Sarah Palin's actions in Troopergate, which cleared Palin of wrongdoing. "The report provides vindication for Sarah Palin who had claimed that Branchflower's investigation had been motivated by partisan politics," Trippany writes.
But Trippany fails to note that the probe was not as "independent" as Trippany portrays it. As TPM points out:
Of course, this was an investigation that Palin herself initiated, by filing an ethics complaint against herself. The three members of the Personnel Board are appointed by Palin, and she cooperated with the investigation.
By contrast, the only independent investigation into the matter -- which was conducted by the state legislature and with which Palin did not cooperate -- found that Palin had violated state ethics laws by pressuring subordinates to fire Mike Wooten, a trooper with whom she was embroiled in a family dispute.
TPM also points out that the new report claims that the original report misconstrued the available evidence and did not consider or obtain all of the material evidence that is required to properly reach findings. One key reason that the original investigation could not "obtain all of the material evidence" was that Palin refused to cooperate with it.
For those who are angry about "negative campaigning," watch Barack Obama as he gave an acceptance speech yesterday "congratulating" Senator John McCain for his effort. Notice Obama "scratch his face" with a single finger. I'll let you watch for yourself to see which one he used.
Think that was an accident? Think again: Watch while he did the very same thing when belittling Hillary just months ago.
With his words, with his actions and with his arrogance, Barack Obama brings a whole new meaning to the word audacity.
Rise up and tell him what you think today so the American people are not met with the very same gesture.
Think Progress reports on a Nov. 2 NewsBusters post by P.J. Gladnick claiming that an audio interview Barack Obama did with the San Francisco Chronicle -- suddently controversial because right-wingers are using it to claim that Obama wants to "bankrupt the coal industry" -- "has been hidden from the public...until now." In fact, as the Chronicle's Carla Marinucci points out, the entire audio file has been available on the Chronicle's website since January.
In apparent response, Gladnick updated the post to claim that the Chronicle "did not include any mention of Obama's willingness to bankrupt the coal industry which you can hear on the audio." Warner Todd Huston similarly chimes in: "[T]hese are really not 'months-old comments' in the strictest sense that we were all made familiar with Obama’s anti-coal comments back in January. Since January, the San Francisco Chronicle has steadfastly left these incendiary comments entirely out of its coverage."
Marinucci also calls out NewsBusters for previous offenses: "the shoddy Newsbusters blog has been caught in the past simply fabricating news regarding the Chronicle's coverage. Our paper has demanded corrections for their fiction, but to no avail." Indeed, we have also caught NewsBusters making numerous false and misleading claims that it has shown little interest in correcting.
Even many Republican strategists had written off GOP Sen. Elizabeth Dole's campaign for dead, but a new anti-atheist ad campaign has dealt an eleventh-hour blow to her Democrat foe, Kay Hagan. And the outcome of their tightening North Carolina race could determine whether Republicans can hold onto the power to filibuster a Democrat-majority agenda in the Senate.
One race that doesn’t look particularly close is that for the US Senate in the state. Kay Hagan has opened up a seven point lead over incumbent Elizabeth Dole, 51-44.
“Kay Hagan’s gained four points on her lead in the last week,” said [Dean] Debnam. “Clearly the Godless Americans ad backfired.”
Finkelstein: Calling Blacks 'The Other Folks' Not Racist Topic: NewsBusters
A Nov. 3 NewsBusters post by Mark Finkelstein criticizes the New York Times' Paul Krugman for "impugn[ing] the party of Lincoln as 'a haven for racists and reactionaries.'"
The only evidence Krugman adduces in support of his Republican-are-racists slur is that GOP Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia "observing large-scale early voting by African-Americans, warns his supporters that 'the other folks are voting.'” Where's the racism, given that 90+% of African-Americans are expected to vote for Obama and presumably for Chambliss's Dem opponent?
Finkelstein doesn't see the racist connotation of calling blacks "the other folks"? We're not sure how to even respond to that.
Obama has already proposed the creation of a homeland police force that will no doubt terrorize those in the "ultra-right" who will become the most vociferous and active opponents of his socialist regime. Hitler had a similar police force called the Gestapo – Geheime Staats Polizie or Homeland State Police – that terrorized the opponents of the Nazi regime.
In 1933 a majority of Germans voted for a demagogue who promised "change" and seemed to be the answer to their economic and national problems. None of those voters could have foreseen that 12 years later Germany would lie in ruins and be occupied by foreign armies.
The young followers of Barack Obama have been well indoctrinated in our public schools to accept slogans rather than actual substance. The Nov. 3, 2008, issue of Time magazine has an extraordinary picture of Obama standing before a huge rally of 100,000 people under the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, with his right arm outstretched reminding one of the famous Nazi salute.
-- Samuel L. Blumenfeld, Nov. 3 WorldNetDaily column
UPDATE: Special bonus Obama derangement:
He favors a weakened America.
He would like to see America become more like the rest of the world – where freedom is rare and happiness rarer.
He would like to see America knocked down a notch or two in the eyes of the rest of the world, which envies what we have and who we were, if not who we have become.
He would like to see the world's playing field leveled – even if that means the ascendancy of a great totalitarian power and sworn enemy of liberty.
He would like to see Americans forced to hand over more of their hard-earned dollars to corrupt governments around the world.
That's what Obama wants. And, as president, he has made it clear he will do whatever is necessary to see his agenda fulfilled – including the disarming of America and Americans.
Barack Obama wants to institute a Civilian National Security Force, a vast militia not unlike Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, a personal army. He knows he would need such a force to protect him and to enforce his will on Americans.
Americans will have not seen such arbitrary power used against them since the days of the Civil War when Lincoln put the Constitution in the bottom drawer of his desk and set about arresting anyone who opposed his policies to enforce the Union on southern States seeking secession. The moral issue was slavery. The Constitutional issue was states rights.
If you want to see another civil war, just wait for this new security force to come into being. Obama would need it because the concept of posse comitatus forbids the use of the U.S. military to enforce laws within the nation. An army of domestic followers of “the One” would fill that need, assuming that all other law enforcement agencies failed to resist such a horrendous plan.
In fact, as we detailed when WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah was peddling this same lie, Obama has never made such a claim. Obama specifically described the "civilian national security force" he proposed as "teams that combine agricultural specialists and engineers and linguists and cultural specialists who are prepared to go into some of the most dangerous areas alongside our military."
If Caruba had any sense of shame, he would retract this column.
Sheppard Won't Accept Obama as President Topic: NewsBusters
NewsBusters links to a Nov. 3 commentary by NewsBusters associate editor Noel Sheppard at the right-wing American Thinker. Sheppard begins his commentary by noting "the disgusting campaign" that is about to "mercifully come to an end," adding: "Whoever the losers, they will believe they were cheated, and will point fingers at those they believe responsible. Almost half the nation will view the winner as illegitimate, and will do everything in their power to undermine his authority as long as he's in the White House."
Sheppard. then explodes into a full-blown case of Obama Derangement Syndrome, making it clear that if Obama wins, he will be following that exact template:
[L]et's be perfectly frank: Obama should never have been a presidential candidate in the first place, and, at the very least, should have been quickly discarded by Hillary in either Iowa or New Hampshire.
With the nation involved in two wars, and the economy in trouble, there's no way a freshman senator with so little experience and no significant pieces of legislation under his belt would ever have raised enough money to mount a presidential campaign, and certainly not a successful one.
However, the media gave Obama Messiah-like status the moment he threw his hat into the ring -- thereby making it easy for him to find benefactors! -- and pushed him past the once-inevitable Hillary. Even worse, they aided and abetted Obama and his minions to dismiss any attacks by the Clinton campaign as racist while diminishing her with sexist and misogynistic barbs disingenuously ignored by a normally feminist press corps.
Once Hillary was tossed aside like so much garbage, media ignored each and every issue that could possibly undermine Obama's ascendancy while savagely attacking Sarah Palin as well as an Ohio plumber that had the unmitigated audacity to actually ask the Messiah a decent question.
Isn't it un-American to respect the office of the president, no matter who it is?
The funny thing is, this is a piece ostensibly lamenting how politically divided the country has become and the resulting "new level of hatred between those of differing political persuasions like nothing our country has experienced in the modern era."
Sheppard has clearly decided to wallow in his hate. Is this someone so filled with bile the kind of person the Media Research Center really wants on its payroll?
MRC Thinks The Truth About Palin Is Too 'Negative' Topic: Media Research Center
A MRC Culture & Media Institute report by Colleen Raezler and Brian Fitzpatrick purports to document how Americans "turned against" Sarah Palin because of "a blizzard of bad reports" about her, "running 18 negative stories for every positive one." But the tone of the report is more about complaining that anything negative was reported about Palin at all, that what was reported didn't reflect the McCain campaign's talking points -- and that (channeling Stephen Colbert) facts and reality have a well-known liberal bias.
The report carefully limits it scope to only the broadcast news networks and to coverage in "the two weeks beginning September 29 and ending October 12," thus avoiding having to discuss period after Palin's nomination and Republican National Convention speech, when news coverage of her was largely -- and perhaps disproportionately -- positive.
The report complained: "Most observers agree that Palin did not perform well in the [Katie] Couric interview, but the network coverage dwelled on the worst moments, making Palin look as unprepared and inexperienced as possible." After noting the focus on Palin's refusal to give a straight answer to Couric's questionabout what magazines and newspapers she read, the report stated:
The network coverage of this exchange left the impression that Palin was unable to identify any news sources because she isn’t interested in current events – an implausible supposition to make about an accomplished politician.
The networks would have provided a more accurate portrayal of Palin had they highlighted the Alaska governor’s thoughtful responses to other questions from Couric.
The report doesn't mention the fact that Palin could have simply answered the question and avoided such a focus.
The report also complained that Tina Fey's dead-on "Saturday Night Live" impression of Palin got news play, calling the impression "demeaning" and adding: "Funny stuff, but is it news?" The report also baselessly asserted that "Palin’s strong performance during the October 2 vice-presidential debate sucked the oxygen out of the attacks on her qualifications and intellect," failing to note that polls taken immediatedly after the debate found that a majority of viewers thought that Joe Biden won the debate.
After lamenting that the networks reported "criticism of Palin from a handful of conservative writers," the report added, "The networks failed to mention that Palin enjoyed the enthusiastic support of far more influential conservative pundits, including premier talk show hosts Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin." So a guy who says, ""It's not the National Organization of Liberal Women. It's the National Organization of Ugly Women," is a "premier" conservative radio host in the eyes of Raezler and Fitzpatrick?
The report also expressed annoyance that the networks were "depicting Palin as nothing more than GOP presidential nominee John McCain’s attack dog. ... Rather than investigate the substance of Palin’s accusations against Obama, the media suggested the criticism was somehow improper." In fact, Palin was the McCain campaign's attack dog, substantive allegations or no.
Finally, Raezler and Fitzpatrick get to their key bit of annoyance: "The networks failed to acknowledge adequately that Palin was doing more during her speeches than attacking Obama. She was also talking about issues, McCain’s plans for the nation, and her own qualifications." In other words, the networks weren't spewing campaign talking points to Raezler and Fitzpatrick's satisfaction. Since when is it the news media's job to by a campaign PR service?
Raezler and Fitzpatrick further confuse negative coverage with bias, scoring stories by "negative," "positive" and "neutral," then deciding on that basis which network was the "most biased." Despite suggesting that the "negative" stories were not factual, no evidence is offered to support it.
In other words, this is a study that should not be taken seriously and must be seen through the CMI's pro-Palin, anti-media agenda.
Earlier this year, Raezler penned a CMI report bashing the Dear Abby advice column, asserting that its a"dvice on sexual matters cannot be trusted" because of its alleged "unwillingness to support traditional, common-sense moral values that steer people away from destructive behavior and protect them from harmful situations." The report appears to be a retaliation for Dear Abby author Jeanne Phillips' expressed support for same-sex marriage.
WND, Newsmax Desperately Cling to Obama Birth Myth Topic: WorldNetDaily
Old smears never die, even after they've been proven definitively wrong. And so, the ConWeb clings to the myth that Barack Obama isn't an American.
Despite running a Nov. 1 AP article stating that "State officials say there's no doubt Barack Obama was born in Hawaii," Newsmax still felt compelled to follow up with a Nov. 2 article attempting to cast doubt on the definitive finding:
If the polls are to be believed, America is on the verge of electing a man whose past is scarcely known.
For example, as of today, the public still has no idea as to the place where Barack Obama was actually born.
He may turn out to be the only current or former president in history that does not have a historic marker or reported location that identifies the exact site of his birth.
[...]
On Friday, an Associated Press story revealed that Hawaii’s Health Department director and the state’s registrar of vital statistics did indeed look at Obama’s birth certificate and verified that he was born in that state.
Still, these officials gave no details as to where the possible next president was actually born. The state cannot release a birth certificate without a person’s permission, but Obama has yet to allow his certificate to be released.
If Newsmax won't condede the truth of the AP's report, why did it run the artile in the first place?
WorldNetDaily also refuses to concede the truth. A Nov. 2 article by fake-document-pusher Jerome Corsi insists:
Even though Hawaii officials now claim to have verified the authenticity of Sen. Barack Obama's birth certificate – in hopes of ending widespread speculation and even multiple lawsuits challenging the Democrat candidate's constitutional qualification to be president – it turns out there is still reason for serious questioning.
In fact, there is considerable evidence that Obama was born in Kenya, not in Hawaii as the candidate and his campaign have maintained.
Corsi's so-called "considerable evidence"? An interview he did with "Sayid Obama, brother of Barack Obama senior and the uncle of Sen. Barack Obama," who said he didn't know "whether Barack Obama junior was born in Kenya or in Hawaii."
New Article: Aaron Klein's Blinders Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's largest attacker (on a volume basis) of Barack Obama has an aversion to reporting that John McCain has done some of the things he bashed Obama for. Read more >>
AIM's Favorite Domestic Terrorist Topic: Accuracy in Media
Cliff Kincaid's final Obama smear before the election, in a Nov. 2 Accuracy in Media column, is a lame one, ranting about William Ayers' wife, Bernardine Dohrn. Kincaid makes the false claim that "Barack Obama’s initial political campaign in Chicago was launched from the home of Dohrn and her husband, another member of the Weather Underground, Bill Ayers."
Kincaid repeats a quote by a former FBI informant trying to make a case against Dohrn: "If you had McCain hanging out with the high Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan, you’d have the media all over him like flies on manure." But McCain does have an associated with an unrepentant domestic terrorist: G. Gordon Liddy.
But Kincaid will never discuss that relationship because AIM has one with Liddy as well.
Kincaid himself hasappeared on Liddy's radio show, and to our knowledge he has not broached the subject with Liddy. Further, Kincaid has taken Liddy's side in a dispute between Liddy and fellow Watergate figure John Dean over the alleged purpose of the Watergate break-in, as summarized in a June 2005 press release:
Kincaid noted that the book, Silent Coup, demolishes the Woodward-Bernstein explanation of who was behind the Watergate break-in. But former Watergate figure G. Gordon Liddy, now a popular radio host, has been virtually alone in promoting the alternative theory of why the Watergate break-in occurred. Kincaid said there is no question that Nixon was forced out of office for corrupt practices which also occurred under other administrations: “Victor Lasky’s classic book, It Didn’t Start With Watergate, set the record straight on that score.” Kincaid cited other scandals that received far less attention, including
· FDR’s Pearl Harbor cover-up, blaming Admiral Kimmel for the disaster
· The stolen presidential election of 1960 that put John F. Kennedy in the White House · Attorney General Bobby Kennedy’s bugging of the phones of Martin Luther King, Jr.
· Clinton administration abuse of the IRS and FBI to go after “enemies.”
Kincaid is curiously silent about Liddy's record of plotting to kill and bomb innocent people. He might want to address that before he does any further bashing of Ayers.
Timmerman's Claim of Obama-Farrakhan Link Lacks Substance Topic: Newsmax
In a last-ditch effort to smear Barack Obama, a Nov. 1 Newsmax article by Kenneth Timmerman asserts that "Barack Obama’s ties to the black nationalist movement in Chicago run deep, and that Obama and Louis Farrakhan "for many years ... have had 'an open line between them' to discuss policy and strategy." But Timmerman's source for the claim is someone who does not have firsthand knowledge of such an alleged relationship.
Timmerman cited "Dr. Vibert White Jr., who spent most of his adult life as a member and ultimately top officer of the Nation of Islam," as the source of his claims. But Timmerman also goes on to note that "White broke with the group in 1995 and is now a professor of African-American history at the University of Central Florida in Orlando." Since White hasn't been involved in the Nation of Islam in 13 years, he can only speculate as to the relationship between Obama and Farrahkan.
Indeed, Timmerman's quoting of White offers no evidence of a current, "deep" relationship, contradicting what Timmerman wrote in his lead paragraph. In fact, no evidence at all of a direct relationship between Obama and Farrakhan is offered, other than White noting that because Farrakhan's Nation of Islam is a political force in Chicago's black community, "wouldn’t be uncommon for [Obama and Farrakhan] to show up at events together, or at least be there and communicate with each other." But neither White nor Timmerman offered any actual evidence that even that happened.
Timmerman goes on to cite White claiming that Obama's speaking style has "a religious tenor to it that is very much Nation of Islam-like. I don’t know if anyone has ever touched on it, but Obama’s speaking style is very Malcolm-like, very Farrakhan-like," adding that "Obama’s remarkable speaking style, even his manner of standing at a podium to appear larger than life, is directly copied from Farrakhan." Timmerman chimes in with specious evidence to purportedly support the claim:
Any American who has listened to early radio or television interviews of Obama can hear how dramatically Obama’s speaking style has changed since he became a United States senator.
In clips dating from 2001 and even early 2004, Obama speaks haltingly and in long, rambling sentences packed with legalese and dense pseudo-academic rhetoric. But not today.
But if neither Timmerman nor White can provide evidence that there's a current, ongoing relationship between Obama and Farrakhan, how can improvements in Obama's post-2004 speaking style be attributed to Farrakhan?
Timmerman's story is hollow and shouldn't be treated as anything other than the desperate, last-minute smear that it is.
Newsmax: Telling Truth About Bossie = Personal Attack Topic: Newsmax
An Oct. 31 Newsmax article by David Patten promotes the anti-Obama video, "Hype: The Obama Effect," released by David Bossie's Citizens United. Patten sycophantically calls the film "a controversial, no-holds-barred film that debunks the quasi-messianic candidacy of Sen. Barack Obama" and benignly describes Citizens United as "a nonprofit advocacy organization that promotes traditional American values." The words "conservative" or "right-wing" appear nowhere in Patten's article, let alone as an accurate descriptor of Citizens United.
Patten makes a minor stab at telling the other side of the Bossie story, if only to set up a straw man for Bossie to slap down:
The liberal Media Matters stated that the DVD “contains numerous falsehoods and misrepresentations of Obama’s record,” then proceeded to attack Bossie personally.
“To be honest,” Bossie told Newsmax, “it is right in the Media Matters way of doing business, which is really unremarkable in their sad, twisted, and demented way of trying to affect people. It doesn’t affect us.”
In fact, the Media Matters (disclosure: our employer) item on Bossie and his film does not "attack Bossie personally"; rather, it accurately describes Bossie's employment history, which includes being fired from his position on the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight in 1998 for his alleged role in releasing selectively edited transcripts of Webb Hubbell's prison conversations.
Neither Patten nor Bossie challenge or contradict any claims made in the Media Matters item about Bossie or his film.
