Corsi Couldn't Find Doctor Linked to Obama Birth -- But We Did Topic: WorldNetDaily
A July 12 WorldNetDaily article by Jerome Corsi asserts: "Despite an in-depth search, the name of any physician or medical attendant who might have helped deliver the baby Barack Obama at Honolulu's Kapi'olani Hospital in 1961 remains shrouded in mystery."
There is no way Corsi could have done any kind of "in-depth search." How do we know? Because we found it at Snopes.
Snopes cites a Buffalo News article about a woman who was a former teacher at the Hawaii school that Obama attended:
When Barack Hussein Obama places his hand on the Bible today to take the oath of office as 44th president of the United States, Barbara Nelson of Kenmore will undoubtedly think back to the day he was born. It was Aug. 4, 1961, at Kapi’olani Medical Center for Women & Children in Honolulu.
“I may be the only person left who specifically remembers his birth. His parents are gone, his grandmother is gone, the obstetrician who delivered him is gone,” said Nelson, referring to Dr. Rodney T. West, who died in February at the age of 98. Here’s the story: Nelson was having dinner at the Outrigger Canoe Club on Waikiki Beach with Dr. West, the father of her college friend, Jo-Anne. Making conversation, Nelson turned to Dr. West and said: “‘So, tell me something interesting that happened this week,’” she recalls.
His response: “Well, today, Stanley had a baby. Now that’s something to write home about.”
The new mother was Stanley (later referred to by her middle name of Ann) Dunham, and the baby was Barack Hussein Obama.
“I penned the name on a napkin, and I did write home about it,” said Nelson, knowing that her father, Stanley A. Czurles, director of the Art Education Department at Buffalo State College, would be interested in the “Stanley” connection.
She also remembers Dr. West mentioning that the baby’s father was the first black student at the University of Hawaii and how taken he was by the baby’s name.
“I remember Dr. West saying ‘Barack Hussein Obama, now that’s a musical name,’” said Nelson, who grew up in Kenmore and went to Hawaii in 1959 to be in Jo-Anne’s wedding party.
Curiously, Corsi makes no mention whatsoever of Dr. West or Barbara Nelson's story, which tells us that any "search" Corsi did was obviously not "in-depth."
Corsi didn't even have to do that much of a search for this story -- in January, WND's Bob Unruh wrote about Barbara Nelson. But then, Unruh's goal was to discredit her.
Unruh claimed to have spoken with Nelson, who said she never claimed that West delivered Obama: "Being one of the leaders in obstetrics in Hawaii, he could have had physical or informational access to all of the obstetrics [on the islands]."
But the online version of the Buffalo News article does not indicate any correction has made to it, nor does the version of the article in the Nexis database. If Nelson was as concerned as Unruh portrays her about the newspaper's purportedly misleading portrayal, surely she would have sought a correction or clarification from the paper. But there's no indication that she did.
Corsi already has a long history of derelict journalism when it comes to Obama, and his failure to even mention Rodney West or Barbara Nelson is just another example of how Corsi will ignore facts to pursue his anti-Obama agenda.
A July 17 post at NewsReal, the David Horowitz Freedom Center's new blog, by Claude Cartaginese baseless touts the F-22 fighter jet without mentioning its significant shortcomings.
Cartaginese writes:
Imagine a fighter jet that would give the United States complete air superiority in any conflict. An aircraft that’s faster, has longer range, and is more fuel-efficient at high speeds than any aircraft ever built. A plane virtually invisible to radar and deadly accurate, almost guaranteeing that any selected target would be destroyed. An aircraft so advanced that the armed forces of every country on earth are scared to death of it and know that they would be defenseless against it for years to come.
We have that plane. It’s called the F-22 Raptor, and our President and Commander-in-Chief, Barack Obama, hates it.
[...]
According to the Pentagon, we need more F-22’s in order to maintain air superiority. At a cost of about $150 million each, however, Mr. Obama deems these planes to be too costly.
In fact, the F-22 has significant problems -- notably that it requires 30 hours of maintenance for every hour it flies, is way over budget, and has problems with its radar-absorbing skin. It was designed to win dogfights with Soviet fighters -- not a problem these days -- and it has never flown over Iraq or Afghanistan.
Further, the Pentagon is split over canceling the F-22. As the Washington Post reported, the Air Force's top two civilian and military leaders support cancellation, though other officials do not.
NewsReal's motto is "Keeping The Cable Guys Honest." Looks like we're going to have to keep NewsReal honest.
Joseph Farah is a man without morals or scruples (as his and his website's continual lies about Barack Obama amply demonstrate), so it's not suprirising to see Farah use the occasion of Walter Cronkite's death to smear the man.
In a July 18 WorldNetDaily article, Farah besmirches Cronkite -- who had died just over 24 hours before -- as someone beholden to a "radical agenda" and maliciously portrays him as a subversive liberal plant.
Farah bizarrely asserts that Cronkite's "press accomplishments were noticeably meager" prior to his elevation to CBS evening news anchor in 1962 -- even though Farah goes on to note that Cronkite had been in journalism for more than 20 years prior, working for both the United Press and CBS. Farah does not explain why 23 years in journalism, including covering World War II, is a "noticeably meager" credential for becoming a news anchor.
Farah goes on to selective edit Cronkite's resume, suggesting that all Cronkite did at CBS before becoming news anchor was serve as the host of "You Are There" and a morning show "where he was paired with a partner: a puppet named Charlemagne." In fact, Cronkite anchored CBS' political convention coverage starting in 1952 and interviewed numerous politicians.
(Oh, and Farah gets the date wrong that Cronkite took over the ahcnor's chair -- it was in 1962, not 1961.)
Farah also recounted the story, as published in "the Nation, a Marxist-oriented journal," of how Cronkite was offered the anchor job due to the prodding of former Nation editor Blair Clark -- or, as Farah put it, "thanks to prodding from a socialist activist who edited The Nation."
Farah then asserts: "Just a few years later, his commentaries on the Vietnam War were credited with turning the tide of American opinion against that conflict." In fact, there apparently was only one timethat Cronkite voiced his opinion while serving as a news anchor: a 1968 commentary that Farah writesas being "credited with swinging the tide of opinion against the [Vietnam] war."
Farah goes on to claim that "After leaving his position with CBS, Cronkite's political activism and offbeat ideas had no restraints." Farah seems to think that any political view that doesn't agree with his far-right take is "offbeat" and "radical"; the views Farah attributes to Cronkite -- support of liberalism, opposition to unilateral military action, a stronger United Nations -- are hardly "offbeat."
Such malicious smears can only be done by a man without morals or scruples. And Joseph Farah is such a man.
MRC Misleads Again on Quote About Kennedy Topic: NewsBusters
Rich Noyes still doesn't get it.
He devotes a July 18 NewsBusters post to once again portraying a statement by writer Charles Pierce that "If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age" -- which the MRC named as "quote of the year" in 2003 -- as "[p]erhaps the most egregious example of the liberal media planting a pro-Kennedy spin on Chappaquiddick."
As we've detailed, Pierce has made clear that the statement was a "tough, but fair, shot" at Kennedy and the MRC took the quote out of context, ignoring the fact that Pierce was highlighting the fact that Kopechne's death effectively kept Kennedy from having the "moral credibility" to be president.
Even though Noyes includes a larger excerpt of Pierce's article in his NewsBusters post that includes the "moral credibility" angle, with the purported goal of showing "how a writer could build up to such a quote," he remains oblivious to the fact that it's a criticism of Kennedy and not praise. And nowhere does Noyes mention Pierce's response to the MRC's taking the quote out of context.
Farah Still Spreading Birther Lies (But Finally Concedes One Truth) Topic: WorldNetDaily
In a July 17 WorldNetDaily column presented as a letter to Rep. Jay Inslee, Joseph Farah claims the congressman has "been completely misinformed about what my news organization has reported" about the Obama birth certificate conspiracy and adds: "Are you not aware that the only living person in the world claiming to be present at his birth swears it took place in Mombasa, Kenya?"
That's a lie. As we've detailed, the full edition of the interview of Sarah Obama upon which Farah bases his claim makes clear that Sarah Obama did not claim that Barack Obama was born in Kenya.
On the other hand, Farah finally tells the truth about what WND has previously reported about the birth certificate released by the Obama campaign, admitting for the first time that, as Inslee wrote to a constituent quoting an August 2008 WND article, a "WND investigation into Obama's birth certificate utilizing forgery experts also found the document to be authentic."Farah writes: "Yes, it is true that I do not believe that document to be a forgery and WND has reported that." That's a big change from Farah's obfuscation on the issue.
One peculiar thing about Farah's column: He's responding to Inslee based on "a June 30, 2009, letter to a constituent." But in a Dec. 20, 2008, column, Farah cited roughly the same statement by Inslee in another "constituent letter." That was when Farah first told the lie that none of WND's experts "could report conclusively that the electronic image was authentic or that it was a forgery," further asserting that it "remains under serious question" whether the document is authentic.
It's unclear why Farah changed his story -- perhaps he realized that we (and Keith Olbermann) busted him on an obvious lie and decided that the truth was the prudent course. Then again, he's still lying about other birther-related stuff, so he's not completely reformed.
Graham: NRA Is A Civil Rights Group Like the NAACP Topic: NewsBusters
Tim Graham, in a July 17 NewsBusters post, is offended that a Washington Post article referred to the NAACP as the "nation’s oldest civil rights organization." Why? Because "the National Rifle Association was founded in 1871":
This is only true if "civil rights group" can only be used as an honorific synonym for "black interest group." If the election of Obama ends one era of the "civil rights" struggle, can reporters stop using the "civil rights" tag just for black groups?
In fact, the "civil rights" component of the the NRA, the NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund, was founded in 1978. Graham offers no evidence that the purpose of the NRA in 1871 was to serve as a "civil rights organization."
Graham goes on to complain that the media doesn't label the NAACP as liberal, even though he failed to label the NRA as conservative.
Two of WorldNetDaily's favorite people, Alan Keyes and Orly Taitz, were on the July 17 edition of CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" to peddle their Obama birth certificate conspiracy theories. After such antics as Keyes responding to guest host Kitty Pilgrim's mountain of evidence that Obama is an American citizen by declaring that he would like to see some evidence, guest John Avlon summed it up perfectly: "You guys are nuts!"
Ponte: Obama Wants to Kill Old White People Topic: Newsmax
Lowell Ponte's Obama Derangement Syndrome is flaring up again, as evidenced by his, er, unique take on health care reform in a July 17 Newsmax column:
Obama will suck away medical resources in Medicare that now go mostly to Caucasian senior citizens and reallocate healthcare to younger, largely minority people — including more than 10 million illegal aliens — expected to pay taxes (and disproportionately vote Democratic) for decades to come.
Darwinian eugenicists can safely project that this reallocation of healthcare will increase and accelerate the die-off rate of elderly, disproportionately white conservative Americans who vote Republican and worship God.
By rationing healthcare for this population group that needs it most — senior citizens — Obamacare will hasten their deaths. He will also increase the tax burden on private pensions they earned.
And because those seniors are mostly white, Obamacare will speed the day when Caucasians become a minority group (albeit without special rights and preferences granted to more politically correct minorities) here.
Terry Jeffrey, Addlepated Conspiracy Theorist Topic: CNSNews.com
A July 16 CNSNews.com article by Terry Jeffrey begins this way:
There is a knock at the front door. Peeking through the window, a mother sees a man and a woman, both in uniform. They are agents of health-care reform.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” says the man. “Our records show that your eleven-year-old daughter has not been immunized for genital warts.”
“And your four-year-old still needs the chicken-pox vaccine,” says the woman.
“He will not be allowed to start kindergarten unless he gets that shot, you know,” says the man—smiling from ear to ear.
“So, can we please come in?” asks the woman. “We have the vaccines right here,” she says, lifting up a black medical bag. “We can give your kids the shots right now.”
“We are from the government,” says the man, “and we’re here to help.”
Is this a scene from the over-heated imagination of an addlepated conspiracy theorist?
Considering who wrote it, we'd have to say yes. It's a scare tactic by Jeffrey, who's purportedly reporting on a bill that would allow "interventions" to increase immunization.
Jeffrey undermines his own scare tactic, however, by stating later in the article, "Many vaccines routinely administered to children in the United States are utterly uncontroversial." That's not quite true; some right-wingers, like the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, oppose mandatory vaccination of children, and others have claimed that vaccine regimens cause autism (though that his been largely debunked).
Further, rather than noting that, Jeffrey focuses instead on claims that vaccines against chicken pox and HPV aren't sufficiently effective. As we'venoted, conservatives have opposed the idea of making the HPV vaccine mandatory, in no small part because they think it will encourage girls to have sex.
Von Campe Brings His Obama-Nazi Smears to AIM Topic: Accuracy in Media
Don Irvine, Cliff Kincaid and the rest of the boys at Accuracy in Media must get a thrill up their respective legs when people liken President Obama to Nazis -- they've invited the foremost practicioner of the smear to write an article that will thrill them all the more.
And Hilmar von Campe doesn't disappoint. In his July 16 "AIM Report," von Campe trots out all the golden oldies:
It may sound like I am exaggerating or over-dramatizing the situation, but I think that we have a repetition of Hitler's policy to get total power developing in the United States. Obama's massive expansion of the federal government will destroy the United States as a world power, make us even more dependent on our enemies, and will ruin a great part of the present population and their descendants.
I believe his real purpose is not to get the United States out of the financial mess but to set the stage for a total takeover. The liberals controlling Congress are helping him in that task.
We will give credit to von Campe, however, for somehow managing to avoid making up a fake Obama quote this time around.
Von Campe goes on to oddly claim: "My writing is part of my restitution for the crimes of a godless government, of the evil of which I was a part." Funny, it seems to us that von Campe's writing, with its embrace of the Nazi-style Big Lie form of attack, is a continuation of such policies.
Noel Sheppard uses a July 16 NewsBusters post to tout last week's rant by Jackie Mason, in which, Sheppard writes, "no one in America has better defined Palin Derangement Syndrome."
Sheppard doesn't mention what else Mason said in his rant, in which he falsely accused President Obama of having "never showed up" during his time in the Senate and attacked Palin's critics as "irrational and hateful and sick."
Sheppard ends his post by asking, "Any questions?" Uh, yes, we have one: Why are you embracing such a hateful, unfunny man as Jackie Mason?
WND Treats Right-Wing Attacks on Health Care As Fact -- Even The False Ones Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's Chelsea Schilling -- who proved her mettle in regurgitating press releases at least once already this week -- showed off her regurgitation skills again in a July 16 article attacking the health reform bill.
Uncritically repeating false assertions that the bill "would make individual private medical insurance illegal"? Check.
Embrace of the Republicans' chart of how purportedly complicated a public health option would be without any comparison with the current health care system or Republican alternatives, not to mention a note to "click to see enlarged version on Dr. Orly Taitz' website"? Check.
Treatment of all critics' statements as factual while making no apparent effort to allow supporters of the plan to respond? Double-check.
But then, such inattention to real journalism is what WND is paying Schiling to do.
Mason Falsely Smears Sotomayor, Claims White People Need Affirmative Action Topic: WorldNetDaily
Jackie Mason directs his hate toward Sonia Sotomayor and the group she once served as a board member -- and, of course, gets his facts wrong in the process -- in his July 16 WorldNetDaily video:
I want to ask you a question: Did you ever hear of Latino Justice? Do you know what that is? it's an organization called Latino Justice PRLDEF. Do you know what that stands for? That stands for protecting Latin people to make sure they get jobs whether they deserve it or not.
[...]
You know what she did? She vetoed, under the name of this organization, PRLDEF Latino Justice, she was one of the members who vetoed Miguel Estrada from becoming an appellate judge.
Where to begin? First, Sotomayor was on PRLDEF's board from 1980 to 1992; Estrada wasn't nominated until 2003. Second, while PRLDEF -- not Sotomayor -- opposed Estrada's nomination, it cannot be logically argued that the group "vetoed" it, since only the Senate, of which the PRLDEF is not a member, can approve or disapprove federal judicial nominations. Third, nobody "vetoed" Estrada's nomination, not even the Senate; Estrada withdrew his nomination after Senate Democrats blocked it for two years.
Nevertheless, Mason rants on:
So a Latino judge is the most important thing in the world only when she gets the chance. When somebody else gets a chance, it's not important. So why is it so important to everybody in America that she become a judge? She must be on the Supreme Court but this guy didn't even belong on the appellate court. She wouldn't have even voted for him if he wanted to be a cop or a lawyer or an -- or an attendant in a men's room, anything. If he's a Latino, she was ready to destroy him, and it meant nothing to her.
Actually, Estrada is a lawyer.
Then, Mason taps into his inner Pat Buchanan (with a dash of Floyd R. Turbo):
She said a lot of intellectualized, phony things -- this is not the only one. But the Republicans are so intimidated, and affirmative action became a part of America now. The mentality of the white people of America is affirmative action. You don't have to pass affirmative action. The white mentality now is affirmative action. If it's a Latino, if it's Hispanic, if it's a black, if anybody who's a minority if a woman, they deserve the job above a white person. And the white person is the one who now leads -- who now positively needs affirmative action. There should be affirmative action, but it should be for the white people. The white people in America are the only ones who can't get a job no matter how well they're qualified.
Like she deserved it -- remember the justice system that she observed, that the white firemen couldn't get the job when they passed the test because black people somehow failed the test and you have to protect them? You have to protect the black people from ever getting ahead. You know why? Because you have to stop the white people. So if the black people happened in this case be too stupid to pass the test, that doesn't count because the white people passed the test.
So what does that mean? That's affirmative action in reverse. That's discrimination in reverse. That's hate in reverse. And that's what she wants. And all her answers to these questions that Republicans asked her are all reverse discrimination answers. But it's an intellectualized version of reverse discrimination so nobody noticed it and the Republicans are too intimidated to follow up on it and they don't want to trap her.
So everybody says now that she deserved the job because she was never intimidated and she was never rattled. The answer now is that you deserve a job because you were never rattled. Serial killers very often are not rattled either when you catch them. Does that mean she deserves the job because of the fact that she makes no sense on any issue and believes abolutely in reverse discrimination in every case? And she defends it with intellectualized answers that go nowhere and mean nothing, they just camouflage cover-ups. She's covering up her racial discrimination, and we need now affirmative action for the white people of America. Thank you.
That's right -- Jackie Mason likened a Supreme Court justice-to-be to a serial killer. That, apparently, is what passes for humor in his world.
MRC Embraces Bogus Claim About Health Bill Topic: Media Research Center
The truth doesn't matter to the Media Research Center.
A July 16 NewsBusters post by the reliably clueless Tom Blumer uncritically repeats a claim in an Investor's Business Daily editorial that the Senate health care reform bill contains "a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal," proclaiming that "you have to go to the editorial pages of publications like the Wall Street Journal and Investors Business Daily to get your news when leftists are in control of the government."
Blumer's MRC bosses pounced on the IBD editorial as well, issuing a July 16 press release referencing "the bombshell easily discovered by Investor’s Business Daily and confirmed by the House Ways and Means Committee: a provision in the bill that severely limits private health insurance choice" and quting MRC chief Brent Bozell demanding that "the media understand – and at the very least, read – the health care bill before any further reporting" (underline in original).
But the IBD claim is not true.
As Media Matters details, the health care bill does not make private medical insurance "illegal" ;the provision to which the editorial referred establishes the conditions under which existing private plans would be exempted from the requirement that they participate in the Health Insurance Exchange. Individual health insurance plans that do not meet the "grandfather" conditions would still be available for purchase, but only through the Exchange and subject to those regulations.
So it appears that Bozell failed to read, let alone understand, the bill he demands members of the media read and understand. And Blumer looks even sillier than usual through his further slobbering over IBD's purported factual integrity:
This post proves the point, as if it even needs to be proven, that you have to go to the editorial pages of publications like the Wall Street Journal and Investors Business Daily to get your news when leftists are in control of the government.
[...]
The fact that little old IBD (no offense, guys, but I know your resources are relatively thin) had to find and investigate all of this on its own should be a cause for shame in every major newsroom in America. More than likely, it is not.
Yes, the House bill writers really tried to obfuscate their handiwork. It's very easy to breeze over "does not" without realizing that it really means "cannot." But IBD caught it, and hundreds of other supposed "real journalists" did not.
[...]
Somebody at the AP, AFP, Reuters, other wires, the New York Times, the Washington Post, all major newspapers, the alphabet news channels (including Fox in this case), and so many other self-important establishment media outlets needs to explain to the public they supposedly serve why they didn't detect and investigate what IBD found.
They can't. Consumers of meaningful news, be advised. If you're not reading IBD's and WSJ's editorials, there's a high chance you're not truly informed. If you rely on the rest of the establishment media, there's a high chance you're misinformed.
There's a high chance that Blumer is misinformed because he's reading IBD editorials.
But it's not as if the truth matters to either Blumer or Bozell.
Zombie Lie Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
Jack Cashill writes of Jamie Gorelick in his July 16 WorldNetDaily column: "As deputy attorney general under President Clinton, she penned the infamous 'wall' memo that prevented intelligence agencies from sharing information in the run-up to September 11."
As we've repeatedlydetailed, Gorelick did not create the "wall" between intelligence agencies -- it was created in the late 1970s and affirmed by the Bush Justice Department shortly before 9/11.
