Newsmax's Double Standard on Senatorial Temperament Topic: Newsmax
David Patten is not quite yet done slapping around Al Franken.
Following up a Newsmax article in which he tried to tie the new senator from Minnesota to ACORN -- a charge he had to admit he couldn't substantiate -- another July 6 article by Patten fervently expressed hope that Franken would make a gaffe as senator that Republicans can exploit.
Patten asserted that "Franken is the only senator to joke about helping terrorists assassinate a U.S. president, to openly marvel that his cocaine habit hadn’t led to addiction, and the only salon [sic] who angrily drops F-bombs during campaign fundraisers." He went on to rehash "incidents that don't bode well on Franken's resume," such as his "mouthy satire" and "vitriol," adding, "To conform to Senate decorum, Franken will have to overcome his penchant for getting personal. Senators avoid the acrimonious personal attacks that Franken appears to relish."
Patten's concern about Franken's temper reminds us of how Newsmax -- specifally, Patten's co-worker Ronald Kessler -- treated John McCain, who has a similar temper problem.
As we detailed, Kessler -- who creepily supported Mitt Romney during the Republican primaries -- repeatedly attacked McCain's temper calling it his "irrational, explosive side that make many of them question whether he is fit to serve as president and be commander in chief" and further pondering "whether a man who seems so out of control should have the authority to unleash nuclear weapons." But not only did Kessler's attacks on McCain stop when McCain clinched the Republican nomination, Kessler recast the negative as a positive -- the former "irrational, explosive side" became a "scrappy approach" and "swagger."
We don't recall Patten showing any concern about McCain's temper, which can only mean that Patten's an utter hypocrite.
In yet another example of WorldNetDaily's complete lack of journalistic ethics and credibility, WND illustrated an article on Al Franken officially being sworn in as a senator with a doctored photo of him:
As others have detailed, the doctored photo was created in 2006 by Ohio Republicans sticking Franken's head on another photo of an adult in diapers in order to smear Franken, and it's been used that way ever since.Thus, WND knows or should have known that the photo is a fake.
Even though the photo was displayed on its front page throughout the day on July 8, nowhere does WND indicate that the photo is a fake -- a violation of journalistic ethics.
It also runs counter to WND's previous criticism of doctored photos used by others. A 2005 article, for instance, claimed that the Council on American-Islamic Relations "doctored a photograph on its website to ensure a woman was shown wearing a customary Islamic headcovering." WND also complained when USA Today manipulated a photo of Condoleezza Rice to give her what it called "a menacing, demon-eyesing stare."
So WND is exposed yet again as a pathetic hypocrite. But you knew that already.
WND Columnist: Palin Has No Business Working Outside the Home Topic: WorldNetDaily
Leave it to a WorldNetDaily columnist to claim that Sarah Palin is not conservative enough. In her July 8 column, Olivia St. John asserts that, as a woman, Palin has no business being in politics -- or any other job outside the home -- in the first place, and that her "highest calling" is to stay at home and take care of her kids:
Palin is an avowed feminist. As such, her husband and children have to fall in line behind her career goals. If everyday actions speak louder than words, then she holds more affinity with her pro-abortion feminist sisters than with her conservative sisters nursing babies at home.
[...]
It came close to sounding as though Palin's family was a priority when she said, "…every American understands what it takes to make a decision because it's right for all, including your family." She also stated, "…we know we can effect positive change outside government" and "actually make a difference."
Was Palin talking about "the hand that rocks the cradle" kind of difference that celebrates motherhood and the value of children, not only inside the womb, but outside as well?
Palin's history over the past 17 years tells another story. Three years after the birth of the first of her five children, she entered the rough-and-tumble world of Alaska (and eventually national) politics and has never looked back.
Has America become so emasculated that our only hope of getting another Ronald Reagan into the Oval Office is to idolize Palin as a political Madonna? Hardly.
Do we have no men who can match her intelligence, charisma and leadership skills? To the contrary, we have better.
Have conservatives become so desperate for a passionate leader that they forsake their most basic values of home and hearth? Yes, but it's more than that.
[...]
It has been said that the sin of homosexuality precedes judgment on a nation. Yet, the first instance in Scripture where we see a curse enacted was in the Garden of Eden when a woman took the lead and a man followed. Does this not describe America today? "As for My people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them," says Isaiah 3:12.
As conservatives continue chanting Sarah Palin for president, are they disenfranchising the men capable of stepping up to the plate in 2012? There are many strong conservative men better qualified to lead the greatest nation in the world.
I pray these men rise to the fore and that Sarah Palin begins to turn her heart toward her home.
I pray America wakes up to realize once again that the hand that rocks the cradle truly rules the world. That is a mother's highest calling. That is Sarah Palin's calling.
Corsi Still Pushing Discredited Document Topic: WorldNetDaily
Jerome Corsi uses a July 8 WorldNetDaily column to detail his pestering of the Obama White House to explain why President Obama wasn't visiting Kenya on a swing through Africa this week -- rehashing dubious and discredited attacks along the way.
Corsi restated his claim that Obama made "repeated appearances" with Raila Odinga during Odinga's campaign for the Kenyan presidency. But as we've noted, Corsi cited only one joint appearance in his Obama-bashing book.
Corsi asserted that "The truth was that I brought back from Kenya firsthand documents I obtained from former Orange Democratic Movement Party members who had turned against Odinga. The documents proved the points I had argued in "The Obama Nation," namely, that Sen. Obama worked hard to try and get Odinga elected as Kenya's president in December 2007."
Among those documents were emails purportedly from Obama to Odinga setting up an Obama aide as a liaison between the two. As we've detailed, the emails are clearly not written by someone for whom American English is a first language. Corsi has never explicitly acknowledged the emails' clearly fraudulent nature, nor has he formally retracted the claims he made based on those documents.
Corsi made no specific mention of the emails in his July 8 article, but he did reference "an internal document" purportedly showing that "'Friends' of then-Sen. Obama" supported Odinga "with a donation of nearly $1 million." As we also detailed, that document's bogus too -- it's an apparent re-creation of a similar document PolitiFact debunked months before Corsi published his version. Corsi has never addressed the PolitiFact debunking of his story.
Corsi has not been one to let the truth get in the way of a good Obama smear, and he demonstrates that again here.
Farah's (And WND's) Military Cluelessness Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah spends his July 8 WorldNetDaily column bashing President Obama for a 1983 newspaper article he wrote as a Columbia undergraduate that advocated a reduction in nuclear arms -- which, of course, Farah dismissed as a "screed ... hat denounced U.S. defense policies." Farah falsely asserted that in the article, Obama "preferred to see deep unilateral disarmament by the U.S."; in fact, the article says nothing about unilateral disarmament.
Farah then repeated claims Obama made in a campaign ad that purportedly "affirmed those ideas" fromthe 1983 article. One of those claims was "I will slow our development of future combat systems," to which Farah responds, "This illustrates the man sitting in the White House today believes America should disarm unilaterally."
Farah has no idea what he is talking about. Obama was not referring to slowing development of all "future combat systems." In fact, Future Combat Systems is a specific Pentagon program launched in 2003 with the goal of modernizing Army weapons systems. It has long been troubled by cost overruns and dubious effectiveness of the planned weapons.
Even Obama's 2008 opponent, John McCain, agreed with Obama, asserting that the FCS program "should be ended" (later amended to "slowed").
Farah's problem appears to be that he's getting his information from his own website. Indeed, all the references to Obama'sstatement about Future Combat Systems in WND's archive treat the term as an all-encompassing generic reference and not the name of a specific military program. Needless to say, since WND writers are utterly clueless about the nature of the program, there's no mention of its troubled history.
So, what Farah was intending as a quick, cheap shot against Obama only exposes Farah's own ignorance.
Your WND Obama Lie of the Day Topic: WorldNetDaily
Aaron Klein writes in a July 7 WorldNetDaily article:
In a revelation that raised a few eyebrows, Obama in April 2008 disclosed he traveled as a college student to Pakistan in 1981.
[...]
Pakistan in 1981 was under military rule. It was difficult for U.S. citizens to travel to the country without assistance. It would have been easier for someone to enter Pakistan on an Indonesian passport.
In fact, as we've detailed, it was not particularly difficult to enter Pakistan in 1981 on a U.S. passport. A June 1981 New York Times article states that "Tourists can obtain a free, 30-day visa (necessary for Americans) at border crossings and airports," and an August 1981 State Department travel advisory explains how Americans can obtain visas for visiting Pakistan. Klein writes that Obama was in Pakistan for "about three weeks," which dovetails nicely with a 30-day visa.
The gist of Klein's article, by the way, is his attempt to twist Obama's description of Jakarta as a "home town" into evidence that Obama was an Indonesian citizen.
Newsmax Strikes Out in Linking Franken, ACORN Topic: Newsmax
The surprise found in a July 6 Newsmax article by David Patten is not that Patten is trying to smear Al Franken by baselessly linking him to ACORN -- Patten has alongrecord of making baseless claims about the long post-election Minnesota Senate battle between Franken and Norm Coleman -- it's that the Capital Research Center's Matthew Vadum is sticking a little closer to the facts these days.
Like Patten, Vadum has a record of playing fast and loose with the facts, particularly aboutACORN. This time, Vadum manages to resist the excesses of Patten's anti-Franken spin: While Patten asserts that Patten "stops just short of saying ACORN grabbed the election away from Coleman," he made it clear that Vadum actually stopped a lot shorter than that by writing, "Vadum says he has no evidence ACORN manipulated the outcome in Minnesota, and Coleman's own attorneys have said the same thing."
Indeed, the only involvement in the Minnesota Senate race Vadum can offer is tangental -- "ACORN helped Minnesota's secretary of state, Mark Ritchie, get elected in 2006." But Patten shoots Vadum down here too:
Vadum blames Coleman's repeated setbacks on "the permissive environment created by the secretary of state who is ACORN's man -- endorsed by them, and ACORN supporters gave money to him."
None of which indicates ACORN has done anything improper, let alone illegal, in Minnesota.
Indeed, despite Patten's article carrying the headline "Experts: Did ACORN Elect Al Franken?" Patten proves that the answer is a definitive no. Later in his article, he's moved to point out again that "None of which, it should be noted again, proves that ACORN did anything wrong in Minnesota."
Patten's "experts," by the way, are all right-wingers -- Vadum, Hans von Spakovsky, a right-wing Minnesota blogger, and the vice president of the Republican National Lawyers Association. As per Newsmax style, only the Republican lawyer is identified by ideology, and that appears to be because it's in the name of her group.
Farah Still Pushing Discredited Obama Birth Certificate Claims Topic: WorldNetDaily
In a softball interview with Examiner.com's "Orlando Republican Examiner" Blas Padrino, Joseph Farah is still repeating false and discredited claims about Barack Obama's birth certificate.
Farah referenced a "sworn affidavit from the translator of the interview with Sarah Obama, Barack's grandmother, who said she was at his birth in Mobassa." But as we've detailed, that claim has been discredited, and WND has never posted the affadavit for public view, let alone informed readers to whom the affadavit is "sworn."
In response to a question from Padrino about whether getting named "Worst Person in the World" by Keith Olbermann is "a sign that your efforts are paying off," Farah said:
When people have to lie about what you do and say repeatedly to mock and criticize you, then you know you must be doing all right. Olbermann obsesses over the fact that one WND news report seemed to challenge the idea that the certification of live birth was fraudulent. But this has never been an issue for me or WND. I have never challenged the certification of live birth as a forgery. The problem is that the real thing is meaningless to the issue of whether he is constitutionally qualified.
In fact, as we've detailed, the August 2008 WND article in question didn't merely "seem to challenge the idea that the certification of live birth was fraudulent," it specifically declared that a "WND investigation" found that the certificate was "authentic" and that Philip Berg's lawsuit questioning Obama's birth "relies on discredited claims." There is no ambiguity, despite what Farah suggests.
Further, contrary to Farah's claim that the veracity of the certificate "has never been an issue for me or WND," WND has promotedclaims attacking the certificate's veracity.
And the part about knowing "you must be doing all right" when "people have to lie about what you do and say repeatedly to mock and criticize you"? Farah must be talking about histreatment of us and anyone else who dares to tell the truth about him.
CNS Tries to Link House Global Warming Bill, Weather At Time of Vote Topic: CNSNews.com
Edwin Mora uses a July 7 CNSNews.com article to bizarrely attempt to draw a relationship between the House's passage of a bill regulating greenhouse gas emissions and the weather in Washington at the time of the vote, which "averaged more than 4 degrees cooler than normal."
It didn't work, of course -- Mora was forced to concede that "Temperatures of individual states or districts do not pinpoint what is going on globally" and quoted a scientist at the liberal Center for American Progress saying that "April was the fifth warmest April globally and it said that May was the fourth warmest May on record" -- both of which blow out of the water his suggestion that below-normal weather for a week in Washington means there's no global warming.
Still, Mora did his best to cling to his baseless theory, citing none other than Alan Carlin, an EPA researcher who wrote a report "that had raised questions about the validity of the agency's conclusions on global warming." At no point, however, does Mora mention the fact that Carlin is not a climate scientist or that actual climate scientists have disputed his research (as we've noted).
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.
