Examiner Misleads Again on ACORN Topic: Washington Examiner
The Washington Examiner's war against ACORN continues with a July 7 package of stories that leave out certain pertinent information.
One article by Kevin Mooney uncriticially repeats Anita MonCrief's attacks against ACORN without mention that MonCrief was fired by ACORN affiliate Project Vote for, among other things, opening a credit card account in Project Vote's name that she used for personal expenses.
And a section of "sound bites" quotes "blogger Weasel Zipper" -- doesn't that just exude credibility? -- calling Obama judicial appointee David Hamilton "a fundraiser for the liberal activist group ACORN" without noting that Hamilton did so for only one month after graduating from college.
A July 6 WorldNetDaily article by Jerome Corsi states:
WND is in possession of an affidavit submitted by Rev. Kweli Shuhubia, an Anabaptist minister in Kenya, who is the official Swahili translator for the annual Anabaptist Conference in Kenya, and a second affidavit signed by Bishop Ron McRae, the presiding elder of the Anabaptists' Continental Presbytery of Africa.
In his affidavit, Shuhubia asserts "it is common knowledge throughout the Christian and Muslim communities in Kenya that Barack Hussein Obama, Jr., was born in Mombasa, Kenya."
Shuhubia further states in his affidavit that he visited Obama's grandmother at her home in the village of Alego-Kogello, on Oct. 16, 2008, in order to conduct a telephone conference interview that would connect with McRae in the United States.
During the telephone interview, McRae specifically asked Sarah Obama two times, "Were you present when your grandson was born in Kenya."
"Both times she specifically replied, 'Yes,'" Shuhubia affirmed in the affidavit.
"Ms. Sarah Hussein Obama was very adamant that her grandson, Senator Barack Hussein Obama, was born in Kenya, and that she was present and witnessed his birth in Kenya, not the United States," Shuhubia continued in the affidavit.
"During the conversation, Ms. Sarah Hussein Obama never changed her reply that she was indeed present when Senator Barack Obama was born in Kenya," Shuhubia insisted in the affidavit.
As we've detailed, this claim has been discredited. The rest of the story was reported by Slate last December:
On Oct. 16 [2008], an Anabaptist minister named Ron McRae called Sarah Hussein Obama, the president-elect's 86-year-old paternal step-grandmother, at her home in Kenya. Two translators were on the line when McRae asked if the elder Obama was "present" when the president-elect was born. One of the translators says "yes." McRae contacted Berg and gave him a partial transcript of the call with a signed affidavit. He opted not to include the rest of the call, in which he asks the question more directly—"Was he born in Mombassa?"—and the translators, finally understanding him, tell him repeatedly that the president-elect was born in Hawaii.
Corsi makes no mention of the Salon version of the story, let alone make any effort to rebut it. Further, neither Corsi nor WND has ever posted online the affadavit it claims to have, so it's impossible to independently judge its authenticity or veracity -- an issue because Corsi has a history of peddling bogus documents from Kenya.
Consider the missing affadavit yet another of the many things WND has kept hidden about its coverage of the Obama birth certificate conspiracy.
New Article: Jackie Mason, Humorless Obama-Hater Topic: WorldNetDaily
The legendary funnyman appears to have given up his career in comedy to hurl bile at President Obama. Read more >>
WND's Tea Party Roundup Less Than Comprehensive Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah proclaimed in his July 6 WorldNetDaily column that "WND's coverage of the anti-Obama tea parties this past weekend was deeper and more comprehensive than the rest of the establishment, corporate press combined," asserting that the "mainstream" press failed to offer "a sweeping overview of what happened on Independence Day in America."
But WND's tea party coverage wasn't exactly comprehensive either.
WND generated just two original articles on the subject -- an article by Joe Kovacs on one rally in West Palm Beach, Fla. (coincidentally, home of WND rival Newsmax), and an unbylined roundup of tea party highlights from across the country.
That roundup, which Farah touted so highly, presented an airbrushed version of the rallies, taking care to gloss over or ignore anything that might make the protesters look bad. For instance, WND mentioned the apperarance of Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurtzelbacher at one rally, but failed to mention what he had to say in an anti-immigrant screed: "I believe we need to spend a little more on illegal immigrants. Get them the hell out of our damn country and close the borders down. We can do it. We’ve got the greatest military in the world and you’re telling me we can’t close our borders? — That’s just ridiculous."
WND also touted the appearance at one Texas rally of "Gov. Rick Perry, who became the first elected official to sign the "Contract with the Constitution," a document that espouses 10 principles including limiting the role of the federal government, protecting the right to bear arms and amending the Constitution to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman." At no point does WND mention that Perry, along with Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn, also got booed.
WND fails to mention that at least two tea party attendees -- including actress Victoria Jackson -- advocated impeachment of Obama, and at least one suggested mounting a coup against the president.
A July 5 WorldNetDaily article by Chelsea Schilling proclaims Richard Botkin's revisionist take on the Vietnam War to be "a war story the state-run media hate to reveal." Schilling, however, fails to mention two salient facts that real reporters would have done in the interest of full disclosure:
AIM: Environmentalists Are Nazis Topic: Accuracy in Media
In the "personal destruction" section of Accuracy in Media's "What Liberals Say" website lists a pair of quotes under the heading "Comparing George Bush with Adolf Hitler."
Apparently, AIM doesn't consider Nazi comparisons "personal destruction" anymore: A July 2 "AIM Report" by Mark Musser describes the Nazis' purported environmentalism -- "a secular religion of nature" -- that was a part of the Nazi blend of "nationalism, socialism, ecology, race and nature protection."
While Musser himself doesn't make an explicit link between Nazis and today's environmentalists, that's clearly the goal of the piece, and the headline -- "The Green Nazi Hell and America’s Future?" -- makes that goal all too clear. Meanwhile, Cliff Kincaid says what Musser didn't in his notes at the end of the column:
The Nazis were also national socialists. And that is the path that Obama is on. This AIM Report by Marc Musser tells another story-how the Nazis adopted "green" policies. They were part of the Nazi plan for totalitarian control of peoples' lives. The "green" policies being pursued by President Obama are supported by the AFL-CIO labor union, which has been infiltrated by Marxists. In fact, AFL-CIO president John Sweeney is a socialist.
In fact, contrary to right-wingers like Kincaid, the Nazis were not leftists -- Hitler banned trade unions within three months of taking power, and among the targets of Hitler's SS paramilitary troops were socialists, communists and liberals.
But then, AIM would have to reinstate its rule against personal destruction for Kincaid to retract his false smears.
Obama-Nazi Reference of the Day Topic: WorldNetDaily
As the modern-day freedom fighters begin to organize and strategize, the government chooses not to reform, but to entrench and expand its control over the people.
The similarity is remarkable, between the rise of the Democratic Socialist Party now in control of Washington and the rise of the National Socialist Workers Party of Germany in the 1930s.
Led by an articulate orator, the German government set out to nationalize health care, transportation, manufacturing and law enforcement. The Obama government has set out to nationalize manufacturing of autos and the finance industry. The Obama-backed "cap and trade" legislation will effectively nationalize the energy and transportation industries. And Obama's nationalized health care program is on the front burner.
You know how often we'vedocumented the lies told by WorldNetDaily. Now you can tell the world about WND's mendacity with this handy bumper sticker, which looks like this:
It's now available at the ConWebWatch store. To order, click here, or click on the icon in the right-hand bar.
This time, he's latched on to the case of Steven Nary, a former Navy sailor who is serving a prison term for second-degree murder in the 1996 death of Juan Pifarre, publisher of a newspaper in San Francisco. Cashill's July 2 WorldNetDaily column laments that Nary was denied parole despite "a near perfect prison record, a long-standing conversion to Catholicism, an excellent psychiatric report, almost enough college credits to graduate, numerous letters of support, several job and living offers – including one from my wife and me – and the imperative of California's empty coffers."
So Cashill has a very personal stake in Nary's case by offering to take Nary into his home. And it's interesting that Cashill seems to think California's budget troubles should give it license to release convicted killers onto the street willy-nilly.
Naturally, as he is all too prone to do, Cashill thinks the decision against granting Nary parole is all part of a grand conspiracy:
Nary had killed a gay man, and San Francisco's political class is always eager to unruffle gay feathers.
Worse, the man Nary killed was the activist publisher of the leading Hispanic newspaper in the Bay area. San Francisco's political class did not want to ruffle those feathers either.
The assistant DA from San Francisco who attended the hearing made sure all the proper gay themes were sounded.
Cashill goes on to provide an account of the case that excuses Nary's indiscretions (Nary and a friend went "to buy some beer and drank, as sailors do, more than they should have") andtries to make Pifarre look as bad as possible by making claims not only not made during the trial but could never have been made given the hearsay nature of them. He claims that Pifarre "had too much to drink and done too much cocaine, both likely true" and was in "a sham marriage to keep him from being deported."
Cashill also claimed that Nary's description of an incident prior to the murder was "describing the precise reaction of a person who had been slipped a date rape drug, then all the rage among sexual predators in the gay community."
Needless to say, Cashill is leaving important details out. The most salient one is that Nary allowed Pifarre to perform oral sex on him, for which Pifarre offered to pay Nary $40.
Cashill claimed that Nary "subdued Pifarre, likely by choking him, although the coroner's report is imprecise." In fact, Nary told police he choked Pifarre for five minutes, and the apartment where Nary killed Pifarre was strewn with blood.
Further, seemingly contrary to Cashill's claim that "Back at the ship, Nary told the chaplain and then turned himself in," Nary originally denied any sexual contact with Pifarre and told the Navy medic who treated the broken hand Nary suffered in killing Pifarre that he had hurt it playing basketball.
It seems that Cashill thinks killing a gay man shouldn't be punish as harshly as a non-gay man -- and that a killer who initially mislead authorities should be somehow rewarded.
AIM Publishes Anti-Obama Census Screed Topic: Accuracy in Media
AIM has published a screed by Paul L. Williams smearing President Obama and non-whites over the upcoming census. It begins:
It's invasive.
It's corrupt.
It's rigged.
It's unconstitutional.
Its purpose is the legislative transformation of the United States of America into a land where conservatives, Christians, and Caucasians will become political castratos.
It is biased and prejudicial.
It serves to channel billions of dollars into bogus political action groups, such as Acorn.
It promotes gay rights and same-sex marriages.
It is a document that was not something drafted by the Berkley chapter of the Barbra Streisand Fan Club or the Alec Baldwin wing of the American Civil Liberties Union.
It is President Barack Obama's 2010 Census Form.
Williams goes on to complain that the census questions "are in English and Spanish, lest anyone think that America is an Anglo nation. Many stand in violation of the Constitution which states that a national census should concern itself solely the number of individuals in a household," and assert that "Not one of the groups" he lists as assisting with the census "represents the despised race of white Europeans who settled this country and gave their sweat and blood to make it the most prosperous nation on earth." He then claims that "Excluded from the list of census partners are such groups, as the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Elks Clubs, the Rotary Clubs, the Moose Lodge, and, of course, the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick," without providing any evidence that those groups were barred from assisting or even that they ever expressed any interest in doing so.
Williams then concludes:
The Obama budget serves to ensure that the United States will be broke.
His foreign policies will serve the cause of the Muslim world to the detriment of Israel.
And his census will make sure that the time of the Judeo-Christian standards and culture in the land of the free and the home of the brave will come to an end.
The chickens have come home to roost.
As we've previously noted, Williams is embroiled in legal action regarding his 2006 WorldNetDaily-published book, "The Dunces of Doomsday," in which he accused Canada's McMaster University of having lax security around the school's nuclear reactor that resulted in the theft of 180 pounds of nuclear material by terrorists. McMaster denied the charge and sued Williams over the claim. The school got a "disclaimer" from WND and its then-publishing partner, Cumberland House, retracting the claim, but the lawsuit, last we heard, is still pending against Williams (his legal defense fund website appears not to have been updated in a while). Williams, meanwhile, filed suit against WND and Cumberland House over the retraction, claiming he didn't sign off on it.
WND Columnist: Here's to the White People Behind Declaration of Independence Topic: WorldNetDaily
Naturally, Jefferson never entertained the folly that he was of immigrant stock. He considered the English settlers of America courageous conquerors, much like his Saxon forebears, to whom he compared them. To Jefferson, early Americans were the contemporary carriers of the Anglo-Saxon project.
The settlers spilt their own blood "in acquiring lands for their settlement," he wrote with pride in "A Summary View of the Rights of British America." "For themselves they fought, for themselves they conquered, and for themselves alone they have right to hold." Thus they were "entitled to govern those lands and themselves."
For the edification of libertarians prone to vulgar individualism, the Declaration of Independence is at once a statement of individual and national sovereignty.
And, notwithstanding the claims of the "multicultural noise machine," the Declaration was as monocultural as its author.
Let us, then, toast Thomas Jefferson – and the Anglo-Saxon tradition that sired and inspired him.
-- Ilana Mercer, July 3 WorldNetDaily column (which originally, and unsurprisingly, appeared at white nationalist website VDare.com)
The Multi-Talented (And Self-Serving) Dick Morris Topic: Newsmax
Only Dick Morris could weave Palin sycophancy, Obama-bashing and self-serving book promotion into a single paragraph, as he does in his brief July 3 Newsmax examination of Sarah Palin's resignation as Alaska governor:
It's probably very hard to be governor of Alaska. Located an entire day's trip away from Washington, D.C., or New York, my guess is that Sarah Palin felt isolated and out of touch in Juneau and felt that it was important to get back in the game. With President Barack Obama destroying the free-enterprise system, bankrupting the nation, and digging us into a hole of debt it will take a decade to climb out of, Palin undoubtedly felt the need to play a role when health care, our nation's manufacturing base, and so many key areas were at stake. As Eileen McGann and I say in our new book "Catastrophe," the threat to our nation could not be greater.
Morris does go on to concede that "her decision may backfire."
WND Renews Attacks on Harry Potter Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has never liked the Harry Potter books, accusingthem of leading children into the occult. With author J.K. Rowling's 2007 revelation that she considers Dumbledore, the Hogwarts Academy headmaster, to be gay, WND found something even more objectonable about the books than witchcraft (as WND columnist Linda Harvey amply demonstrated at the time).
That attitude continues as the release date for the latest movie based on the books approaches. In a July 3 WND article, Bob Unruh has decided that a "What Would Dumbledore Do?" website "has begun specifically promoting 'gay' marriage." How so? Through this statement:
To accept our reality exactly as it is and want nothing more than that reality is to stand in a place of self-acceptance. To accept oneself as we are right now can happen at this moment, but to accept oneself for a sustained period of time often times takes a lifetime of practice. But make no mistake: there is no higher joy.
No, really -- that's what Unruh specifically cites. He does not explain how that statement could even remotely be interpreted as" specifically promoting 'gay' marriage."
Unruh goes on to assert that the Potter books and movies "have faced criticism for attacking the Judeo-Christian values on which the United States was built." As evidence, Unruh offers right-wing Ben Shapiro's objection to Rowling's revelation that Dumbledore is gay ("When did the old dude with the funky beard turn into Gore Vidal? ... Why did Rowling surreptitiously plant a creepy subtext in the most popular children's book of all time?") and right-wing film critic Ted Baehr's hysterical attack on the books, in which he asserts that "These books and movies teach rebellion against authority" because "Witchcraft means rebellion against God's authority in the Bible," and opposes Dumbledore's aphorism that "Every person has light and darkness. You have a choice," to which Baehr responded: "Imagine saying this to Cho Seung-Hui after he had his killing spree at Virginia Tech. Or Adolf Hitler. … Contrary to Dumbledore's idiotic aphorisms, there are bad people."
So homosexuality, witchcraft and the idea that people are inherently good are un-American? Really?
WND Chooses to Trust Another Untrustworthy Source Topic: WorldNetDaily
Asa we've mentioned, WorldNetDaily has spent the past several days obsessed by a person's attempt to sell on eBay what is claimed to be a a certified copy of Barack Obama's birth certificate issued in a Mombasa, Kenya, hospital in 1961. WND initially expressed skepticism, even trotting out Jerome Corsi -- who knows his fake Obama documents from Kenya -- to cast doubt on the claim.
But as eBay has tried to warn people away from it by warning of the likely fraudulent nature of the offer, noting its policy forbidding the sale of certain government documents, and repeatedly removing it from its website, WND has decided to treat it as real and is now in league with the seller. A July 2 WND article quotes the seller, "colmado_naranja," as saying that after he posts a video about the alleged certificate on YouTube, "I will be heading over to WorldNetDaily to talk with Joseph Farah. I will disclose everything to them." (The article adds: "But there has been no video or verbal contact with WND.")
WND repeats the seller's claim that he is "a self-proclaimed 'collector of old Dominican and Cuban money' and has worked in the Congo." But WND has revealed no evidence that it has done any investigating into the background of "colmado_naranja."
However, a blogger at the Barackryphal website has -- and what he found raises numerous questions about the seller's trustworthiness:
Jim Jr. was born with one kidney. It kept him going for the first 18 years of his life. He rarely missed school, and even felt fine the day a school nurse took his blood pressure and realized something was wrong. Go see a doctor, she told him. Right away...
Jim Jr. was put on the national kidney transplant list in November 2001, five months after doctors diagnosed him with end stage renal disease...
In late 2002, a man from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, sent an e-mail to the family. The man, who called himself Lucas Smith, said he was 23 years old and had emigrated from Russia five years earlier. He had seen the Web site and, Smith said, he wanted to help.
The Wilsons stopped searching for a donor. Smith passed all of the medical, physical and psychological tests. They thought he was going to save their son's life.
Then, on May 3, 2003, Smith sent Jim Wilson Sr. an e-mail saying he wanted to be compensated for donating his kidney.
Wilson said they would pay his airfare, but because it was illegal to receive money for an organ donation, they wouldn't give him any other cash.
Five months after holding out a lifeline, Lucas Smith disappeared.
Jim Wilson Sr. called the Cedar Rapids police.
Yes, at least one Lucas Smith of Cedar Rapids, Iowa has previously attempted to extort money for a valuable commodity in his possession, only to never deliver on it. Maybe it's the same Lucas Smith of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Maybe not.
Barakcryphal adds:
Another FreeRepublic poster ran Mr. Smith's name through the archives of the Cedar Rapids Gazette, and unsurprisingly, Lucas Smith has a criminal history. Most notably, in 2000 he pled guilty to passing several bad checks after opening a bank account with false information, and in 1998 he received a deferred judgment on a charge of forgery.
WND might want to get serious about engaging in its supposed mission of investigative journalism before promoting this story any further. Then again, WND has a lower standard of fact -- well, actually, no standard of fact -- when the target is one of its political enemies. After all, it has yet to admit it was wrong in repeating never-verified allegations by the utterly discredited Larry Sinclair.
WND Proven Wrong Yet Again on Obama Birth Certificate Topic: WorldNetDaily
While WorldNetDaily is obsessing over an attempted eBay auction of a purported Barack Obama birth certificate from Kenya -- a picture of which the seller won't even post, let alone offer any independent, credible authentication of the purported document -- yet another fact-checker has proven another WND allegation regarding the certificate wrong.
A July 1 PolitiFact.com item examines an allegation by WND, in league with the Western Journalism Center, that White House press secretary Robert Gibbs lied when he told WND's Les Kinsolving in a White House press briefing that Obama's birth certificate is posted on the Internet:
WorldNetDaily.com, through an owner The Western Center for Journalism, responded with an ad in the conservative publication Human Events, in which they called Gibbs' response arrogant, factually incorrect, lies.
Moreover, the ad said, "members of the liberal elitist media...instead of pressing Gibbs on his outrageous statements...openly laughed."
The ad is right about that, journalists could clearly be heard chuckling at Kinsolving's questions.
The question here is, did Gibbs lie?
You already know the answer: no. FactCheck recounts the factual evidence that shoots down WND's assertions, then concludes:
So back to the claim that Gibbs lied about posting Obama's birth certificate on the Internet. WorldNetDaily is correct that the Obama campaign didn't post his original birth certificate on the Internet. But their suggestion that there is some significant difference between the two documents is wrong. They both prove the same thing. Maybe the original would identify the hospital where Obama was born, but that's irrelevant. The issue is what city, and therefore country, was he born. The document posted by the campaign proves Obama was born in Honolulu, according to Health Department officials. And that's really the central issue here.
The Health Department says the "Certification of Live Birth" is Hawaii's version of a birth certificate. Calling it by other names - Certificate of Live Birth, Certification of Live Birth - is just semantics. WorldNetDaily may be right that the original birth certificate wasn't posted, but if Hawaii says the the document Obama posted can rightly be called Obama's birth certificate, how is Gibbs lying? We harbor no delusions that anything we say here will slow the persistent drumbeat of the birthers, but we rule this statement False.
Will WND respond to this, or will it pretend it doesn't exist and hide it from its readers, as it has the numerous previous debunkings of its claims?
