NewsReal Falsely Asserts Obama Health Reform Modeled on Canada
Topic: Horowitz

In a July 20 NewsReal post, Claude Cartaginese asserts that the Canadian health care system is "the same system that President Barack Obama has chosen as a model for this country to emulate as he takes us down the path towards socialism.

In fact, Obama has explicitly rejected a single-payer system like Canada's.

Horowitz Blogger Hides F-22 Problems
Topic: Horowitz

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.

Horowitz Crushes Kupelian's Obama Derangement Syndrome
Topic: Horowitz

David Horowitz's FrontPageMag has surprisingly been a voice of restraint against the Obama Derangement Syndrome plaguing his ConWeb bretheren, particularly WorldNetDaily. FrontPageMag has decimated WND's obsession with Barack Obama's birth certificate with claims to which WND has yet to directly responde.

Now, a June 2 blog post by Horowitz appears to take direct aim at WND managing editor David Kupelian's June 1 column alleging that the Obama administration would use the shooting death of George Tiller like Hitler used the Reichstag fire:

I continue to get emails comparing President Obama to Hitler, the most recent suggesting that the murder of an abortion doctor might be Obama's "Reichstag Fire" and would be used by Obama to take away our civil liberties and terminate our Republic as Hitler did the Weimar Republic in the 1930s. This is lunatic stuff. Obama is better compared to Neville Chamberlain than to Adolf Hitler if you like these kinds of comparisons. Americans are not Germans -- it's a very big difference as far as political cultures are concerned, and Obama is not Hitler. Obama is a machine politician and whatever dangers he represents (and as I see it there are many) are dangers because they reflect the heart and soul of today's Democratic Party not because he is a Manchurian candidate or a closet Islamist, as more than a few conservatives seem to think.

Thus his appointment of a advocate of institutional racism to the Supreme Court is a predictable selection for any Democrat in the White House. His appeasement of Iran and the genocidal Palestinians, perhaps the most worrying of his foreign policy moves is the policy of his Secretary of State, his congressional leaders and his chief of staff. These facts add up to a worrisome prospect but a revival of the Third Reich is not one of them, and those who think it is and say so discredit only themselves.

Horowitz surprisingly also shoots down another right-wing conspiracy while he's at it: "As a footnote to the above, the claim that the Obamaites used their control of Chrysler to terminate Republican dealerships is demonstrably a myth." As we've documented, WND is just one of the ConWeb outlets promoting that conspiracy.

FrontPageMag Falsely Accuses National Geographic of Anti-Semitism
Topic: Horowitz

A May 19 FrontPageMag article by Mike Finch -- the vice president of the David Horowitz Freedom Center -- accuses National Geographic magazine of "Jew-hate" by publishing an "anti-Semitic hate screed." But Finch selectively quotes from the article in question, pulling statements out of context.

Finch writes:

We learn of Lisa and Mark, a Palestinian Christian family living on the outskirts of Jerusalem.  They are getting ready for the Easter celebration in the city, a time of excitement.  However the mood is brought crashing down as we learn of the horrible life they are forced to live.  Israeli law, checkpoints, the “Wall”, permit papers, have made their life unbearable.  As Mark states, “it’s like a science experiment.  If you keep the rats in the enclosed space and make it smaller and smaller every day and introduce new obstacles and constantly change the rules, after a while the rats go crazy and start eating each other.  It’s like that.”  Huh??
 
Two long paragraphs are given to repeat this style of Hamas and PLO propaganda on the horrors of the Nazi Apartheid Israeli state.  We have all heard this claptrap before of course, but now a great secret is revealed to us.  The Christians are leaving because Israel is an anti-Christian tyrannical regime.  Why of course, it’s the Jews fault! 

But the National Geographic article in question puts the couple's criticism of Israel puts the couple's situation in a context that Finch doesn't provide his readers:

This is the first Easter, ever, that Mark has been allowed to spend with the family in Jerusalem. He is from Bethlehem, in the West Bank, so his identity papers are from the Palestinian Authority; he needs a permit from Israel to visit. Lisa, whose family lives in the Old City, holds an Israeli ID. So although they've been married for five years and rent this apartment in the Jerusalem suburbs, under Israeli law they can't reside under the same roof. Mark lives with his parents in Bethlehem, which is six miles away but might as well be a hundred, lying on the far side of an Israeli checkpoint and the 24-foot-high concrete barrier known as the Wall.

Finch continues:

But just so the Jews are not alone in the blame game, there are other culprits.  No, again, it is not the area’s suicidal Islamists who view Christians as infidels who need to be subjugated to inferior human status, converted by force or killed.  No, further blame falls on the Christians in the West, the United States, George Bush (naturally) and his “regime change” wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  And the Crusaders get thrown in again.  Amazing what ills of the world those poor Crusaders have been blamed for.  Genghis Kahn and Attila the Hun must be jealous.

Again, Finch takes the statement out of context, falsely portraying the Palestinian and Arab Christians as directly blaming America for their plight:

For anyone living in Israel or the Palestinian territories, stress is the norm. But the 196,500 Palestinian and Israeli Arab Christians, who dropped from 13 percent of the population in 1894 to less than 2 percent today, occupy a uniquely oxygen-starved space between traumatized Israeli Jews and traumatized Palestinian Muslims, whose rising militancy is tied to regional Islamist movements that sometimes target Arab Christians. In the past decade, "the situation for Arab Christians has gone rapidly downhill," says Razek Siriani, a frank and lively man in his 40s who works for the Middle East Council of Churches in Aleppo, Syria. "We're completely outnumbered and surrounded by angry voices," he says. Western Christians have made matters worse, he argues, echoing a sentiment expressed by many Arab Christians. "It's because of what Christians in the West, led by the U.S., have been doing in the East," he says, ticking off the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. support for Israel, and the threats of "regime change" by the Bush Administration. "To many Muslims, especially the fanatics, this looks like the Crusades all over again, a war against Islam waged by Christianity. Because we're Christians, they see us as the enemy too. It's guilt by association."

Finch continues his fact-free screed:

When we get back to Lisa and Mark, we learn that the Israeli settlements will mean “no more water for us” and in a moment of candor she states “I hate the Israelis, I really hate them.  I think even Nate (their 3 year old son) is starting to hate them.”  Maybe Lisa needs to search for a few New Testament passages to read to little Nate instead of spreading this vile anti-Semitic hatred that has so infected her people

But Finch took that out of context too, omitting what the article stated next:

"I hate the Israelis," Lisa says one day, out of the blue. "I really hate them. We all hate them. I think even Nate's starting to hate them."

Is that a sin? I ask.

"Yes, it is," she says. "And that makes me a sinner. But I confess my sins when I go to church, and that helps. I'm learning not to hate. In the meantime, I go to confession."

"Hate destroys the spirit of those who hate," says Father Rafiq Khoury, a soft-spoken Palestinian priest who hears his share of confessions at the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem. "But even in the midst of all these troubles, all this violence and despair driving Christians away, you can see new life in the faces of young people and experience the hope that is God's gift to humanity. That is the message of Easter."

Finch asserts that "National Geographic has forever shamed itself" by publishing this article, but it's Finch who has shamefully taken the article out of context and falsely accused the magazine of being anti-Semitic. We'd demand a retraction if we thought Finch was capable of feeling shame.

Deep Thought
Topic: Horowitz
If you're going to complain that "the Left rationalizes its positions by demonizing its opponents. Those who disagree with them are not wrong but evil," should you be working for an organization whose editor -- your own boss -- wrote a book demonizing "leftists" by claiming they are sympatico with terrorists and, thus, not just wrong but evil?

Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch
Topic: Horowitz

Our hypothetical terrorist-in-waiting isn’t the head of the Aryan Nation, the Michigan Militia or the Ku Klux Klan. He is President Barack Hussein Obama, whose extremist ties include Bill Ayers, ACORN, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright and Louis Farrakhan. If you see the president acting suspiciously in an airport, please advise law-enforcement personnel.

Instead of smearing Obama’s opponents, perhaps the Department of Homeland Security should be staking out the White House.

-- Don Feder, April 30 FrontPageMag.com column

FrontPageMag Falsely Suggests Obama Behind Attacks on Writers
Topic: Horowitz

Just because Andrew Walden is trying to talk some sense into conspiracy-prone Obama-haters by pointing out the folly of their Barack Obama birth certificate obsession doesn't mean he himself is not an conspiracy-prone Obama-hater.

An April 28 article by Walden published by FrontPageMag falsely suggests that Obama is behind the efforts of "Iraqi-British ex-Baathist billionaire" Nadhmi Auchi (who has links to Tony Rezko and thus, according to right-wing guilt-by-association reasoning, to Obama himself, though the only evidence Walden to that effect is that they purportedly met once at a party) to squelch criticism of him by Walden and others by threatening to file libel lawsuits in British courts, where the libel threshold is lower than in the U.S. The article carries the headline "Obama's Chilling Crew" -- which also appears on the version of the article on Walden's own website, Hawaii Free Press -- which creates the false suggestion that Obama is funding or somehow supporting Auchi's efforts.

While Walden doesn't further that impression in the article itself, neither does he dispel it. Thus, the misleading headline continues to mislead, and Walden is presumably quite happy about that.

Floyd Brown Misleads on Media
Topic: Horowitz

Floyd Brown is proving himself to be as mendacious about the media as he is about President Obama.

Brown -- as we've detailed, the smearmonger who's the new head of the right-wing attack group Western Journalism Center -- asserts in an April 2 FrontPageMag column that the New York Times "missed" Obama's Special Olympics remark during his appearance on Jay Leno's show. In fact, the Times ran a story and blog post on Obama's apology for the remark, as well as publishing the complete transcript of the appearance on its website.

The premise of Brown's column is little more than a parroting of talking points from the Media Research Center -- that a "politically correct and liberal-biased newspaper industry that engages in censorship is the real reason for the industry’s woes and decline," not the paradigm shift from print to online. Brown cites a poll claiming that "fewer than 20 percent of Americans said they could believe “all or most” media reporting" without noting that organizations like the MRC have spent millions of dollars over many years to raise doubts about the media and promote anecdotal evidence of "liberal bias" while ignoring evidence to the contrary.

In railing against the "liberal-biased newspaper industry" for losing money, Brown fails to mention that the three most prominent conservative newspapers -- the New York Post, the Washington Times, and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review -- were money-losers long before the current newspaper crisis, and the only reason they remain in business is because of the deep pockets of their billionaire owners.

Brown also doesn't seem to understand that accusations of press "censorship" that he makes go both ways. We could claim, for example, that Brown is engaging in "censorship" by not highlighting our WJC profile on his WJC blog, even though it appeared at the Huffington Post, which has higher traffic than some of the websites Brown links to, and even though it would be of interest to his readers.

The general cluelessness of Brown's media critique demonstrates he cares nothing about genuine journalism and would seem to be a harbinger of how he plans to manipulate the WJC -- as a partisan cudgel against Obama.

FrontPageMag Substitutes Obama Birth Certificate Conspiracy With New Conspiracy
Topic: Horowitz

Good news: A major right-wing site is denouncing the Obama birth certificate conspiracy theory. Bad news: It's substituting an even more stupid one.

Following up on David Horowitz's March 30 attempt to get his fellow right-wingers to back away from Obama Derangement Syndrome (because it worked so well with them the last time he tried it), an April 1 FrontPageMag article by Andrew Walden attempts to put a stake through the heart of the birth certificate conspiracy:

For Obama to have been born in Kenya, Ann Dunham and Barack Obama Sr. would have had to fly from Honolulu to Mombasa, give birth in a substandard third world hospital, fly back and then somehow arrange for a fraudulent birth certificate to be entered by the State of Hawai'i on August 8, 1961 (at the time governed by Republican William Quinn). They would have also somehow planted the phony birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser (at the time edited by Republican Thurston Twigg-Smith) and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Hawai'i’s current Republican Governor Linda Lingle would also have to be complicit in the cover-up as would all of the leftist 1960s University of Hawaii friends of Ann Dunham and Barack Obama Sr—among them US Rep Neil Abercrombie.

Walden even calls out WorldNetDaily -- one of the main promoters of the conspiracy -- for getting stuff wrong:

Since Hawai'i law forbids the release of birth certificates to anybody not authorized by Barack Obama or his family, Obama further feeds the paranoia by choosing not to grant such permissions. A World Net Daily story claiming Hawai'i’s Republican Governor Linda Lingle ‘sealed’ the birth certificate is totally false. The governor’s office has asked for a retraction.

It's rather curious, not to mention yet another breach of journalistic ethics, that WND has not reported the governor's denial or otherwise responded publicly to it -- indeed, the Oct. 26, 2008, WND article by Jerome Corsi making this apparently false claim remains live. Erik Rush even repeated the false claim in a December 2008 Newsmax column.

Then, Walden blows it by claiming that right-wing obsession over the birth certificate is exactly what Obama wants them to do:

By refusing media requests for a look at the actual paper birth certificate, Obama’s campaign gave sly backhanded assistance to the forgery hype. The internet release of the birth certificate via hyper-partisan website Daily Kos on June 12 before posting it on a campaign website was likely calculated to fuel the frenzy. This is Obama’s Gramscian strategy designed to redirect the opposition down a blind alley.

[...]

Obama benefits from creating an opposition which seems to be standing by the side of the road impotently pointing to a piece of paper as if it could stop 63 million voters from anointing their ‘chosen one’. Birth certificate lawsuit plaintiff Phil Berg is a Democrat and whether he understands it or not, he has done great work on behalf of his party.

It is time for folks to stop being played by the Obama campaign and drop this counter productive ‘phony birth certificate’ nonsense.

As the Huffington Post's Jason Linkins put it, Walden is "substituting an utterly insane conspiracy theory with a thunderously obtuse one."

Walden might not be a fan of the birth certificate conspiracy, but he has been a promoter of other Obama conspracies: As we've noted, Accuracy in Media has reprinted Walden's purported exposure of "the Frank Marshall Davis netweork in Hawaii,"and AIM's Cliff Kincaid has approvingly cited Walden's work of examining "Davis’s Sex Rebel book."

Ultimately, Walden's complaint seems to boil down to that the birth certificate conspiracy is drawing attention away from his own conspiracy.

Feder Repeats Bogus Shepard Revisionism
Topic: Horowitz

In a March 31 FrontPageMag article, which he claims is the speech he would have given to a college Republican group railing against hate-crime laws had he not be subject to "an organized and highly disruptive demonstration by a mob of socialists, 'peace activists,' and homosexuals," Don Feder writes:

Take the 1998 homicide of Matthew Shepard. Was Shepard murdered because he was a homosexual? Possibly. But it’s equally plausible that he died because his murderers wanted drug money, and Shepard (weighing in at 105 pounds) was an easy mark. According to a 2004 report by ABC’s “20/20,” that’s what many close to the case believe.

As we detailed, what Feder portrays as "many close to the case" is in fact merely one of the men who killed Shepard -- who has a history of telling lies about his role in the death of Shepard and who mounted a gay-panic defense during his murder trial -- changing his story. The others are right-wingers like Feder who believe the killer because his new story fits in with their anti-gay agenda.

Here's what an actual person "close to the case" -- the former police chief of Laramie, Wyo. -- said at the time about the killer's new story: "Only three people know what really happened that night. ... One of them is dead and the other two are known liars and convicted felons -- murderers."

Indeed, Feder is a veritable font of misleading far-right talking points in this speech-that-never-was. He recounts the overblown case of anti-gay protesters who were arrested at a 2004 gay event in Philadelphia, claiming they "could have been sentenced 47 years in prison and $90,000 in fines," adding, "They weren’t disruptive. They didn’t attempt to block access to the event." In fact, as we detailed at the time, the leader of the protesters, Michael Marcavage, carried a bullhorn, leading his protest in the middle of the celebration and refusing to obey an order to go to an area on the edge of the event. (Feder doesn't explain how the use of a bullhorn can be anything but disruptive.) Further, even the attorney for the gay group that organized the event said, "They might get six to 12 months probation. ... Nobody's going to jail for 47 years" (the charges were ultimately dropped).

Feder also repeats the case of college librarian Scott Savage, who was accused of "sex-discrimination and harassment ... for recommending four books," one of which was David Kupelian's anti-gay "The Marketing of Evil." We realize Feder could care less about getting facts straight (witness his work for Accuracy in Media's anti-New York Times website), but as we've noted, the actual accusation against Savage was "harassment based on sexual orientation," something functionally different from what Feder said.

FrontPageMag Can't Stop Smearing Teresa Heinz Kerry
Topic: Horowitz

Back in 2004, we busted FrontPageMag's Ben Johnson for making false and misleading claims about Teresa Heinz Kerry's philanthropy. Kerry's husband lost the election more than four years ago, but FrontPageMag is still at it.

In a March 27 FrontPageMag, Johnson again misleads about contributions by the Heinz Endowments (in which Heinz Kerry plays a role in distributing) to the Tides Foundation, writing that "Teresa donated more than $8.1 million to Tides [Foundation] and established a branch in western Pennsylvania," then went on to list the purportedly "radical" organizations to which Tides has links. Johnson fails to mention the important fact that, as we've detailed, Heinz money was earmarked for specific projects, not a general donation to the Tides Foundation.

Johnson tries to gloss over his omission by claiming that "Tides keeps up to ten percent of the transaction as its fee, and from this largesse it finances such radicals as the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Lawyers Guild, and the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR)." But as we've also detailed when WorldNetDaily made that claim, that's a grotesque logical distortion and a desperate attempt at guilt-by-association.

Johnson adds this curious caveat near the start of his article:

Nothing in this report should be construed as suggesting that the Heinz Endowments are only political organizations or engage in no philanthropic gestures.

That's another misleading statement. If Johnson wasn't out to smear Heinz Kerry and the Heinz Endowments, he would be more interested in telling the full truth. But he's not.

Deep Thought
Topic: Horowitz
Should a guy who has written a book about "the left's romance with tyranny and terror" be proud of his own association with an unrepentant terrorist?

False Modesty Watch
Topic: Horowitz

From a sycophantic March 2 FrontPageMag Q&A with Jamie Glazov, FrontPageMag editor, about Glazov's new book, "United in Hate: The Left's Romance With Tyranny and Terror":

Q: Did the content of the book present challenges in finding a publisher?

A: Yes. It is a hard-hitting book against the liberal-left, which makes it difficult to find a publisher. And it says many things that the boundaries of discourse, which are molded by the Left, do not allow.

Oh, we suspect it wasn't that hard for Glazov to find a publisher -- after all, right-wing publishing houses would slather over the opportunity to publish someone like Glazov who is likening liberals to terrorists. And that's exactly the kind of publisher Glazov found: the book division of WorldNetDaily.

Feder Gets It (Repeatedly) Wrong
Topic: Horowitz

Don Feder brings the editorial non-integrity we've come to count on at his little Accuracy in Media-bankrolled anti-New York Times website -- a site AIM is so proud of that it doesn't even offer a link to it from its front page, even though it still promotes a "What Liberals Say" page that hasn't been updated in months -- to a Feb. 27 FrontPageMag screed purporting to "guide you through the ideological land mines of Lib-Speak." Let's count the ways Feder can't be bothered to get basic facts straight, or to engage in civil discourse:

He repeats the false claims that "ACORN gets $4.2 billion" in the stimulus bill.

He asserts that "$2 billion for a high-speed passenger train from Los Angeles to Las Vegas." In fact, the bill does not name any specific project, and funding would be allocated by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a former Republican congressman.

Feder writes of the New Deal: "All of Roosevelt’s stimulus spending (which was a lot for the times) and alphabet agencies, resulted in higher unemployment in 1938 – five years into the New Deal – than in 1933, when he took office." In fact, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1933 unemployment was 24.9 percent; 1938 unemployment was 19.0 percent.

Feder writes: "Unilateralism is embraced by those with a healthy survival instinct. Imagine that unilateralist Franklin Roosevelt declaring war on Japan on December 8, 1941, without the consent of the League of Nations, Vichy France, Tokyo Rose and the German-American Bund." Of course, FDR didn't "declare war on Japan"; he asked the Congress to do so after Pearl Harbor.

Feder is also quick with the insults,calling Ted Kennedy "Ted The Super-Sized Statist" and calling community organizers "urban guerrillas."

If there's anything we can count on from Feder, it's lies and hate.

It's All About Him
Topic: Horowitz

In an interview with the Emory University student newspaper, published Feb. 25 at FrontPageMag, David Horowitz lets a little truth slip out:

How do you feel about being paired in debate with individuals such as Ward Churchill, who you termed “an idiot”? Is it demeaning to be paired with them in debate, as if they’re your equivalent?

Yeah, totally. Believe me, the internet is wonderful and horrible. I know everything that’s said about me thanks to Google. A lot of it is deliberately disrespectful and hateful and is meant to destroy me.

The attacks have been so unprincipled that I have had to create my Center [the David Horowitz Freedom Center] in order to have a platform.

There you have it -- the only reason the Horowitz organization (including FrontPageMag) exists is to promote Horowitz.