Aaron Klein Anti-Obama Agenda Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
What does a report about Barack Obama's plans to give a speech in an Islamic capital have to do with an Egyptian Islamic cleric's purported exhortation for Obama to convert to Islam?
Apparently oblivious to the fact that one has nothing to do with the other, Klein spends the next 35 paragraphs rehashing yet again Obama's purported dalliances with Islam as a child, presumably just copied-and-pasted from previous articles.
The stench of Obama-hate emanating from Klein's articles is well nigh suffocating.
Newsmax Flip-Flops on Patrick Fitzgerald Topic: Newsmax
A Nov. 10 Newsmax article by David A. Patten claimed that "Barack Obama will face a severe 'trial by fire' over whether to fire U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald and other U.S. attorneys, following Democratic Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s arrest Tuesday for allegedly offering to sell Obama’s vacated Senate seat to the highest bidder," adding that "any move to fire Fitzgerald would be highly controversial as a possible conflict of interest." Patten goes on to note that "That Fitzgerald suddenly sees Republicans lining up to defend him is profoundly ironic, given that both prominent Republicans and Democrats have found themselves in his investigatory crosshairs over the years," adding:
Fitzgerald’s delicious gift for offending the rich and powerful on both sides of America’s partisan divide was never more evident than in the Valerie Plame Wilson case. On the one hand, Republicans were troubled that Fitzgerald decided to prosecute I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, for perjury charges that had little or nothing to do with the concerns that originally triggered the investigation -- namely, that a Bush administration official may have broken the law by leaking the identity of Plame, a CIA operations officer, to columnist Robert Novak. Libby was convicted, but President Bush commuted his sentence in July 2007.
Patten fails to mention that Newsmax has a prominent role in that twist of irony, having felt less than "delicious" about Fitzgerald's prosecution of of the Plame leak.
As we detailed at the time, Newsmax didn't even wait until Fitzgerald's October 2005 indictment of Libby before smearing him as a partisan, nitpicking crony:
Newsmax claimed reports that Fitzgerald's charges would focus on "perjury, obstruction of justice and false statement" raise "speculation that the Leakgate case may devolve into a Martha Stewart-like prosecution, which drew howls of derision from legal critics."
Newsmax dismissed Fitzgerald as a "longtime crony" of James Comey, the then-deputy attorney general who appointed Fitzgerald to the special counsel post in 2003.
Newsmax called Fitzgerald's 22 months of work before issuing the indictment of Libby "small potatoes compared to the results achieved by Independent Counsel Ken Starr's Whitewater probe over the same period of time," adding: "Starr was appointed to investigate Bill and Hillary Clinton's involvement in the corrupt land deal on August 4, 1994 - and by that December, his office had already secured a guilty plea from the number two man at the Justice Department, longtime Clinton crony Webster Hubbell." (The Whitewater investigation actually began in January 1994 with the appointment of Robert Fiske.)
Newsmax tried to smear Fitzgerald by claiming that "the targets of his investigations into political corruption have been overwhelmingly Republican," and claiming that Fitzgerald indicted more than 60 people in connection with wrongdoing connected to former Illinois Republican Gov. George Ryan, compared with two indicted in a probe of Chicago Democratic Mayor Richard Daley. The next day, Newsmax corrected its numbers, admitting that "it's also true that Fitzgerald has done a better job going after Democrats than media reports we cited yesterday would indicate."
Newsmax also raised the issue of Fitzgerald being accused of "prosecutorial misconduct" in an unrelated case, but it's not until the second-to-last paragraph that it's noted that a three-judge panel ruled that Fitzgerald did nothing illegal.
After Fitzgerald issued his indictment, Newsmax followed up by putting words in Fitzgerald's mouth and misstating what he had said about the Plame case to make it appear that he said that Plame was not covert.
More Obama Lies from Jerome Corsi Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Dec. 9 WorldNetDaily article by Jerome Corsi repeats a claim by a former bank employee that he was fired for objecting to land appraisals regarding the deal in which Barack Obama bought a Chicago house. But Corsi can't even be bothered to get the basic facts correct about it.
Corsi writes:
The transaction involved Obama purchasing a multi-million-dollar home in Chicago's trendy Kenwood neighborhood, across the street from the Rezkos, at a discounted price. On the same day, Rezko's wife purchased a strip of land adjacent to the Obamas for the full asking price then sold it to the Obamas for $300,000 less.
1) It was not a "multi-million-dollar home"; it was listed at $1.95 million, and the Obamas purchased it for $1.65 million.
2) Corsi has apparently never heard of negotiating for a price on a house or even of purchasing a house for less than the listed price, a very common practice in the real estate industry. In fact, the sellers of the house have said they did not cut their asking price because Rezko bought the adjacent lot, and the Obama's offer for the house was the best one received.
3) Rezko's wife did not purchase "a strip of land adjacent to the Obamas for the full asking price then sold it to the Obamas for $300,000 less." Rezko's wife purchased an adjoining lot, then sold a 10-foot-wide strip land, comprising one-sixth of the lot, to the Obamas, who paid one-sixth of what Rezko paid for the full lot.
Is it any wonder that Corsi's anti-Obama book was dismissed as untrustworthy?
P.S. Corsi still hasn't answered questions about -- let alone retract -- the bogus documents from Kenya he used to falsely smear Obama before the election.
Gainor Misleads on Unemployment Rates Under Clinton Topic: Media Research Center
In a Dec. 8 CNSNews.com column, the MRC Business & Media Institute's Dan Gainor writes:
A year into what we just heard is an official recession, unemployment hit 6.7 percent. That’s the highest for the Bush presidency. At this rate, it will soon get as bad as it was in 1993 – when Bill Clinton was president.
Reporters are leaving out that reality of the “staggering” job losses, as CBS called them. Journalists rarely point out that total unemployment isn’t even as high as it was during Clinton’s term (and when they do, the Clinton name is conspicuously absent.)
[...]
The last time unemployment was at this level wasn’t 1974 – it was October 1993 under Clinton. Unemployment peaked at 7.1 percent during the Big Dog’s term.
What Gainor doesn't tell you: Clinton inherited this high level of unemployment from his predecessor, George H.W. Bush. According the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that 7.1 percent peak occurred at the beginning of Clinton's presidency, in February, April and May 1993. Nor does Gainor mention what the unemployment rate was in the last full month of Clinton's presidency -- 3.9 percent.
And yet, Gainor has the chutzpah to complain about how "[j]ournalists manipulate statistics."
Gainor further fails to mention that unemployment was on a largely uninterrupted decline during the eight years of Clinton's presidency, from the aforementioned 7.1 percent to 3.9 percent.
Gainor goes on to write, "Journalists rarely point out that total unemployment isn’t even as high as it was during Clinton’s term (and when they do, the Clinton name is conspicuously absent.)" But he fails to note that the vast majority of the actual job losses that resulted under his prececessor.
Indeed, George H.W. Bush's name is, to coin a phrase, conspicuously absent from Gainor's article.
MRC-Fox News Appearance Watch Topic: Media Research Center
A Dec. 10 appearance by the MRC Business & Media Institute's Dan Gainor on Fox News appears to follow the template: Gainor appeared solo, and there's no evidence in the clip posted that Gainor or the MRC were identified as conservative.
A Dec. 9 appearance by the MRC's Seton Motley on "Fox & Friends" similarly follows the template: He appears solo and is not identified as a conservative.
UPDATE: A Dec. 10 appearance on Fox News' "Your World With Neil Cavuto" not only follows the template but also enthusiastically buys into the MRC's talkingpoints of the day about media reports allegedly not identifying Rod Blagojevich as a Democrat.
Judicial Watch, Klayman Suddenly Relevant Again to ConWeb Topic: WorldNetDaily
As we've detailed, the ConWeb served as a willing conduit for Judicial Watch in the go-go Clinton-suing years of the late '90s, but when Judicial Watch expanded its scope to examine the Bush administration, that coverage dropped off precipitously.
WorldNetDaily actually hadn't slacked down its coverage as much -- Joseph Farah even endorsed Larry Klayman's futile bid for the Republican nomination for Florida Senate in 2004 (he came in seventh out of eight candidates), with Farah slobbering, "Larry Klayman is an American hero." So it was first in line to promote Klayman's newest anti-Democrat crusade.
In the interim, Klayman left Judicial Watch and is now running a newly founded group called Freedom Watch. That website points out that Klayman has sued current Judicial Watch chief Tom Fitton, claiming he "has misused the organization for his own ends, improperly dissipating and squandering donor monies and turning the group into a very bad joke, which mostly boasts of the appeals it is forced to take following a string of defeats since I left." Klayman as a goal to "retake control of this once great organization." A separate website further tells Klayman's side of the story.
With an incoming Democratic administration, guess who's back in favor again?
A Nov. 20 article by Bob Unruh described Klayman as claiming that "American voters have been 'defrauded' by President-elect Barack Obama." Unruh also gives Klayman space to make various unsubstantiated claims about various Obama appointees.
With the scandal engulfing Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, it was time for Klayman's former employer to get into the act.
A Dec. 9 WND article by Unruh rehashes a Judicial Watch press release in which Judicial Watch's Fitton claims (and fervently wishes) that the Blagojevich scandal "is a burgeoning crisis for Obama that should shake his presidency to its core."
During the anti-Clinton years, Judicial Watch received millions of dollars from the likes of Richard Mellon Scaife. This time around, will Klayman and Fitton tell us where their money is coming from? We already know the ConWeb won't bother to find out.
Is Janet Porter Misusing Faith2Action Resources For Her Personal Anti-Obama Crusade? Topic: WorldNetDaily
Aswe'vedetailed, Faith2Action's Janet Folger Porter has been waging a personal, dishonest jihad against Barack Obama through her WorldNetDaily columns, particularly over the birth certificate issue. But is she misusing Faith2Action resources in the process?
The tagline on Porter's column has been altered in the course of Porter's recent rantings. The statement that Porter is "president of Faith2Action" is now followed by an asterisk, which leads to a note at the end stating, "*Title and affiliation for identification purposes only." That's misleading and meaningless, since Porter is using the Faith2Action website for her Obama-hate crusade as well as her other right-wing political activism that is Faith2Action's ostensible purpose. There are links on the front page to Porter's column (with the headline "Obama Is an Immigrant") as well as links to other politically related items that are presumably outside Faith2Action's stated mission of "help[ing] provide an overview of what the different branches of the cultural war are doing before you choose to enlist":
We should start praying for President-elect Barack Obama. God’s Word instructs us to pray for those in authority even if we strongly disagree with them.
However, the issue of whether Obama is truly qualified to serve as President has yet to be determined. If he isn’t a natural born citizen, the U.S. Constitution prohibits him from taking office. We have a new website where you can find ads, videos, articles, and action steps at www.obamaforgery.com
The large TV media outlets need to be contacted, asking them to start providing coverage of what could very well be the “story of the century”
[...]
State that we need Congressional hearings immediately to determine whether the Constitutional requirements are really met by Barack Obama.
Please also make some calls to the White House (President Bush) at 202-456-1414, the Attorney General’s office at 202-514-2000, and the FBI at 202-324-3000 and ask them to get involved, asking for the release of Obama’s real birth certificate.
Write a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts and CC: the 8 Associate Justices asking them to review the Obama citizenship cases. The names of the Associate Justices are Samuel A. Alito, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, David H. Souter, John Paul Stevens, Stephen G. Breyer, and Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Make copies for each justice, seal them in individual envelopes, and then send them together in one larger envelope by FedEx or some other form of expedited delivery since time is of the essence. (The justices cannot be reached by phone, fax, or e-mail.) The address is U.S. Supreme Court, 1 First Street, NE, Washington, DC 20543
Further, the Yes to Democracy blog notes that last month, Faith2Action issued a press release about a planned ad on the birth certificate issue in the Washington Times, but that the ad itself does not carry Faith2Action' does not seem to appear on it, rather the address is the law firm of Philip Berg, whose lawsuit over the birth certificate has garnered much right-wing attention. Further, "on 17 November, Berg's website takes responsibility for the ad - with no mention of Faith2Action."
It's unclear exactly what tax status Faith2Action holds -- none is listed on the Faith2Action website, and the its donation page states that donations made via that particular link "not tax-deductible and will be used to win the cultural war through lobbying and legislative efforts," adding: "To make a donation that is tax deductible, make your check payable to 'Faith2Action 4 Education' and send it to P.O. Box 633, Dania Beach, FL 33004."
The "Hot Battle Action Steps" prominently begins by begging for money: "For several months, Faith2Action has been operating on very low funds. If you can help us in any way, it would be greatly appreciated."
The fact that Porter and WND felt the need to go the asterisk route to suggest that Porter's columns don't represent Faith2Action tells us that there is some tax-exempt status that is threatened by Porter's Obama-hate.
But Porter's status as president of Faith2Action is not for "identification purposes only" if Porter is using Faith2Action resources to further her Obama-hate crusade -- possibly in violation of any tax-exempt status F2A holds.
Perhaps Porter should share with her readers and F2A donors how exactly Faith2Action donations are being spent and how her anti-Obama activism, and her use of F2A resources in pursuing it, fulfills F2A's mission.
Kincaid Cribs Column Idea from Aaron Klein Topic: Accuracy in Media
How far-right is WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein? Cliff Kincaid is apparently getting column ideas from him.
A few days after Klein mined a blog post by a former Weatherman member to baselessly present speculation-as-fact that Obama "is 'feigning' a centrist position on some issues so he can ultimately push through a radical agenda" (as we noted), Kincaid does the same thing in a Dec. 9 Accuracy in Media article, quoting the most of the same people Klein did and comes to the same baseless guilt-by-association conclusion: that this is "proof that the President-elect is pursuing a political strategy designed to confuse people about his revolutionary agenda."
That Kincaid is apparently cribbing from Klein demonstrates how far each have gonedown the Obama-hate trail.
Newsmax Attacks Lies About Automakers, Adds New One Topic: Newsmax
A Dec. 8 Newsmax article by Dan Weil purporting to expose "four big lies about the Big Three automakers" perpetuates another lie in the process.
Weil writes:
1. Detroit’s wages really aren’t out of sync with those of auto workers in other countries.
It has been well established that total compensation for U.S. auto workers, including pensions and benefits, comes in around $70 per hour. That compares to $45 per hour for Japanese workers.
In fact, as we've noted, autoworkers do not take home "$70 per hour" in wages and benefits; that number includes pensions and health care paid to retirees.
Porter Takes Richardson Out of Context Topic: WorldNetDaily
In her Dec. 9 WorldNetDaily column, Janet Folger Porter takes a statement by Bill Richardson out of context to assert that Richardson said Barack Obama wasn't born in the U.S.
Citing a brief YouTube clip of a TV announcer on an French TV channel translating a interview Richardson gave in Spanish, in which the announcer says that Richardson said "Barack Obama is an immigrant," Porter howls: "You don't need a translator to understand what Richardson admitted: Barack Obama is NOT a natural born citizen. That means we have a guy who's planning to take over the White House who is in direct violation of the Constitution. And his own Cabinet member says so."
Needless to say, Richardson did NOT say that "Barack Obama is NOT a natural born citizen." Richardson was speaking about Obama's appeal to Hispanics, as is clear from even the brief clip Porter cites. The clip, in its entirety (remember, as translated from Spanish and aired on French TV):
Barack Obama is the best candidate for the Hispanic community because our community wants a united country. Obama is an immigrant. When he speaks to Latinos, he doesn't just speak about immigration and civil rights.
But logic is not on Porter's agenda. She continues screaming that this is "the story of the century." She also repeats the claim that the birth certificate released by the Obama campaign is an "obvious forgery" without mentioning the fact that the publication where her column appears weekly has declared it to be authentic.
By telling such lies-by-omission to her readers, Porter isn't exactly turning Faith2Action, is she?
NewsBusters Quick to Tie Obama to Blago Topic: NewsBusters
Well, that was quick. A Dec. 9 NewsBusters post by Warner Todd Huston mines the GOP's Obama oppo research website in order to try and tie Barack Obama to corrupt Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, though he can't come up with much more than that they both knew Tony Rezko. Nevertheless, Huston whines about the media's puported bias in not reporting a connection where there isn't one: "It was as if the media thought Obama had never even met Blago. Yes, the media is doing a bang up job!"
This is undercut a tad by fellow NewsBuster Noel Sheppard pointing out that Blagojevich called Obama a "motherf***er" for not going along with his scheme to auction off Obama's Senate seat to the highest bidder.
UPDATE: The MRC decides the mainstream media is good for something after all. A NewsBusters post by Scott Whitlock ponders whether the "mainstream media" will report on Obama's links to Blagojevich by citing a report in ... the mainstream media, by ABC's Jake Tapper.
Of course, Whitlock conveniently forgets to copy-and-paste Tapper's statement that "There are no allegations that President-elect Obama or anyone close to him had anything to do with any of the crimes Gov. Blagojevich is accused of having committed."
WND Cashes In on Its Readers' Obama-Hate Topic: WorldNetDaily
Remember WorldNetDaily's last-minute drive to get readers to send it letters that WND would FedEx to the Supreme Court in order to badger it into hearing a baseless challenge over Barack Obama's birth? It appears that channeling its readers' Obama-hate is turning into a profit center for WND.
WND claimed in a Dec. 5 article that it sent "6,682 FedEx packages of nine letters each" to the Supreme Court. WND charged each letter-writer $9.95 for the privilege. Somehow we suspect FedEx charged WND a lot less than $89.45 each to overnight those envelopes to Washington. Profit!
So WND's going to that well again -- according to a Dec. 8 article, it's launching "a similar FedEx letter drive directed at individual Electoral College members" to harrass them into not voting for Obama. WND has jacked up the price -- it's now $10.95 for the privilege of badgering "470 members of the 538-member Electoral College with a pre-written letter raising questions about Barack Obama's eligibility to be the next president."
Again, it doesn't send that much to send boxes of letters relative to the cash WND will be raking in from each individual letter.
WND repeats its usual false claims in order to rile up the base -- most prominently that "the [Obama] campaign posted a document purporting to be a birth certificate devoid of these details [of "the hospital of his birth, the attending physician and other details"]. It has also come under fire as a possible forgery." No mention, of course, of the fact that WND found that document to be authentic and that any challenge to the contrary "relies on discredited claims."
If WND ever had any sincere motives in attacking Obama over the birth certificate, they fell by the wayside long ago. At this point, Joseph Farah and WND are engaging in a cynical exercise of profiteering and pure hatred. We'll believe differently if WND ever accounts to its readers exactly where their FedEx money is being spent -- highly unlikely since WND hides behind the scrim of being a privately held company and refuses to release any financial information to the public, even that of its legal defense fund.
The fact that WND's profiteering is based on a fraud is icing on this cynical cake.
NewsBusters' Gladnick Thinks County Sheriffs Can Be Impeached Topic: NewsBusters
P.J. Gladnick noted in a Dec. 8 NewsBusters post that a New York Times editorial had accused notoriously anti-immigrant Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio of "tak[ing] the pursuit of the undocumented to unconstitutional extremes," then adds: "But...but if he instituted 'unconstitional extremes,' couldn't 5-term sheriff Arpaio be impeached? I mean the Times did imply he was acting unconstitionally. They wouldn't be fibbing would they?"
This might make sense if the Maricopa County sheriff could be, you know, "impeached." Gladnick offers no evidence of an "impeachment" provision in Arizona statutes governing county sheriffs. There does appear to be a mechanism for recalling a county sheriff, as appears to have been attempted. But impeachment? Gladnick is just being silly.
New Article: Hilmar von Campe, Apt Pupil Topic: WorldNetDaily
The self-proclaimed former Hitler Youth uses Nazi-esque Big Lie techniques to smear Barack Obama with allusions to, ironically, Hitler. And WorldNetDaily loves it. Read more >>
Caruba Still Wrong on Global Warming (Among Other Things) Topic: CNSNews.com
We've previously noted Alan Caruba's attempts to claim that the Earth has been cooling since 1998 are contradicted by the fact that it, er, isn't. Nevertheless, Caruba's Dec. 8 CNSNews.com column claims yet again that "the world is now into a cycle of global cooling that has been in effect since around 1998."
This time, though, Caruba digs himself deeper with overbroad claims that are misleading and/or false.
Caruba asserts that "every 'fact' put forth by Al Gore’s 'An Inconvenient Fact' has been demonstrated to be false." Unsurprisingly, Caruba offers no evidence to back up the claim -- of course, he can't even bothered to get the name of Gore's film correct (that would be "An Inconvenient Truth."). In fact, even the judge who ruled in favor of a British lawsuit previously touted by global warming deniers as proving there were nine errors in "An Inconvenient Truth" stated that the film contains "four main scientific hypotheses, each of which is very well supported by research published in respected, peer-reviewed journals and accords with the latest conclusions of the IPCC."
Caruba went on to write of a statement on global warming by Barack Obama: "Every single word of this statement is false, in whole or in part." Really? Even "and" and "the"? (Caruba apparently thinks Obama is Lillian Hellman.) Needless to say, Caruba doesn't back this up either.
Caruba then cites claims made by "Viscount Monckton of Brenchly [sic], a noted British scientist." In fact, as we've previously noted, Lord Monckton (aka Christopher Monckton, Third Viscount of Brenchley) has no scientific credentials, holding degrees only in classics and journalism.
Caruba heads something called the National Anxiety Center, but Caruba appears to have some anxiety about doing basic research and getting things correct.
