WJC Lies About MoveOn and Bush-Hitler Video Topic: Western Journalism Center
The Western Journalism Center has posted a video titled "Rachel Maddow Lies about MoveON.org," which purports to debunk Rachel Maddow's claim during the Aug. 16 edition of "Meet the Press" that MoveOn never ran an ad comparing President Bush to Adolf Hitler.
But the WJC is the liar. While the video includes a clip of something that appears to be a MoveOn ad comparing Bush to Hitler, at no point does the WJC mention that it was submitted as part of a contest MoveOn ran in 2004 and never ran as a paid ad by MoveOn. Indeed, MoveOn specifically stated of that submission and a second similar one, "They will not appear on TV. We do not support the sentiment expressed in the two Hitler submissions." MoveOn later removed the ad from its website.
How is it that Floyd Brown and the WJC think it can get away with telling such a blatant lie?
WND's Birth Certificate Conspiracy Gets Even More Desperate Topic: WorldNetDaily
The efforts of WorldNetDaily to seize on any inconsistency, real or imagined, to smear President Obama and cast down on his citizenship are getting increasingly desperate.
An Aug. 17 article tries to make a big deal out of Obama's "official MySpace page" containing an older age than his official age, "which would mean he would have been born during the archipelago's time as a territory of the U.S., the islands' status from about 1900 until statehood in 1959." The article does not explain that a MySpace is not an official form of identification.
Meanwhile, an Aug. 17 article by Drew Zahn tries to make the case that Obama's parents (or someone else) made "a simple payoff" to Hawaii state officials to falsify Obama's birth date in 1961 because ... well, because birth certificates were falsified in New Jersey in 2004. Zahn did not provide evidence of falsification occurring in Hawaii in 1961 -- let alone any evidence of falsification involving Obama's birth certificate.It's a very crude attempt at guilt-by-association, even though the case Zahn cites is 40 years and half a hemisphere away from Obama's birth.
Geller Still Hiding Facts in 'Honor Killing' Runaway Case Topic: Newsmax
Pamela Geller has devoted another Newsmax column to the story of Fathima Rifqa Bary, an Ohio teenager who ran away from home to a Florida pastor claiming that her parents planned to kill her for converting from Islam to Christianity. And again, Geller is hiding facts about the case.
Geller defends the pastor to whom Bary fled, Blake Lorenz, from accusations of being a cult leader by misdirection, not denying the accusing but asserting instead that Islam, "the group that silently approves of the murder of a daughter who shames her family by not wearing the proper head dress ... or by choosing another religion (like Rifqa Bary)," is the real cult and nto "the group that offers sanctuary to a poor threatened girl."
Geller, as she did before, fails to mention that, as we've detailed, Lorenz claims to receive "special personal messages from God about the imminent end of the world." Isn't the claim of receiving personal messages directly from God de facto evidence of a cult leader?
Geller also fails to note that Ohio police have said that Bary's parents have known about Bary's conversion for months and "appear to be caring."
Instead, Geller offers anonymous messages from "someone saying she was a friend of Rifqa."
Geller has done little but exploit this case for her own anti-Islam crusade. She's certainly not interested in the facts.
Who Says Wash. Times News Pages Aren't Anti-Obama? Topic: NewsBusters
An Aug. 15 NewsBusters post by Jeff Poor chortles that The New York Times ran a correction to an article that claimed the Washington Times is "decidedly opposed" to President Obama, stating that the reference was "to its opinion pages, not to its news pages." Poor didn't mention that the correction came after Washington Times editor John Solomon whined about the reference by insisting that "Our news pages have no agenda except to accurately and fairly cover the news."
Further, Poor shows no interest in looking into whether Solomon's claim is even true. As the pile of Media Matters items on Washington Times news articles about Obama appears to suggest, the answer may very well be no.
Finally, there's no logical reason for Poor to be offended by the idea of the entire Washington Times organization being depicted as conservative, given that Poor's employer, the Media Research Center, has an entire division dedicated to portraying the New York Times, news operation and all, as liberal and pro-Obama.
Newsmax's Walsh Smears Health Care Reform As Eugenics Topic: WorldNetDaily
Smear artist James Walsh is at it again in his Aug. 17 Newsmax column. This time he turns the smear machine on high by likening health care reform to eugenics.
No, really, he did. Never mind that there is nothing remoting approaching eugenics in any of the planned health care reform bills -- Walsh has decided there is.
Walsh asserts that "A new version of eugenics is being written into healthcare legislation by the Obama administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress." What it is Walsh never really makes clear; he writes that "the neo-eugenics of Obamacare could mean rationed healthcare for the unborn, infants, young children, those over 65, and the disabled, especially the 'mentally retarded.'"
Note the word "could" -- Walsh is offering nothing but scare tactics and speculation. Walsh offers no evidence that "rationed healthcare" would occur under health care reform, let alone that anything in the proposed bills equals "eugenics."
Walsh concludes by asserting that "The Obama administration would be ill-advised to consider eugenics." But it's not.
Walsh has gone from right-wing-scripted lies about health reform to wildly and irrationally vicious smears. Why does Walsh -- who purports to be an attorney -- want to tell falsehoods that, if he told them in a court of law, would earn him a quick trip to prison for perjury?
Farah Spreads Falsehoods, Smears Obama As Nazi Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah begins his Aug. 17 WorldNetDaily column by claiming, "Outfits like the George Soros-subsidized Media Matters will have a field day with it – excerpting passages out of context, deliberately distorting the words I am carefully choosing and, in typical knee-jerk fashion, mocking its premise."
OK, we'll take the bait. First, in the span of his first six paragraphs, Farah tells two falsehoods. First, Soros does not fund Media Matters.
Second, Farah asserted that "national socialism ... was then and remains today, despite the denials of historical revisionists, a 'left-wing' idea. All socialism is, by definition, a left-wing notion." Which, given the Nazis' hatred of leftists and communists, cannot be true.
Farah then asserted that "Obama seeks to use his power to impose policies that have, like it or not, a striking resemblance to those Hitler promoted in the 1930s," followed by a laundry list of unsubstantiated claims such as "Infanticide" and "Unfair treatment of Jews, in Obama's case, with regard to Middle East conflict." Farah then complained that is "acceptable for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to say American citizens attending congressional town halls are swastika-carrying thugs," even though some of those protesters were indeed carrying swastikas and engaging in thuggishbehavior.
Farah concludes by denying that he's unfairly likening Obama to Nazis: "Am I calling Obama a little Hitler, a Nazi or a fascist? I am saying American liberty faces very serious challenges from the country's own leadership – not from citizens who dissent against those policies. That's what happened in Weimar, Germany, too."
What Farah doesn't mention, of course, is the striking resemblence of WND's anti-Obama rhetoric to that of the Nazis against the Jews.
Fredric J. Baumgartner wrote in his book "Longing for the End: A History of Millennialism in Western Civilization":
The great enemy the Germans had to destroy to achieve their golden age was not Antichrist but the Jews. Yet Nazi rhetoric against the Jews was remarkably similar to that about Antichrist. The Nazis looked for the marks to identify a Jew as thoroughly and eagerly as any premillennialist did for Antichrist.
As it so happens, WND has recentlyendeavored to liken Obama to the Antichrist. So who's the Nazi now, Mr. Farah?
From an Aug. 17 NewsBusters post by Matthew Balan complaining that people on CNN described the AR-15 one man was toting outside of President's Obama speech before the VFW (one of several guns carried outside the speech) as an "automatic weapon" and an "assault rifle":
The civilian AR-15 is a semi-automatic rifle, not an “automatic weapon” as Murphy put it. It also cannot be accurately described as an “assault rifle,” as Sanchez labeled it, because an assault rifle, by definition, is a selective-fire weapon, with either fully-automatic or semi-automatic capability. Leave it to three liberals to get it wrong on guns.
So the AR-15 a "semi-automatic rifle," but it's not an "assault rifle" because those have "semi-automatic capability"? We're confused.
WND Slobbers All Over Rep. Bachmann Topic: WorldNetDaily
In the great tradition of its slobbering profile of Orly Taitz, WorldNetDaily's Drew Zahn has penned a similarly fawning article on right-wing Rep. Michele Bachmann, sycophantically describing her as "one of the leading defenders of liberty and conservative principles on Capitol Hill."
Zahn is certainly not going to bring up any unpleasantness. For instance, he quotes Bachmann as saying:
"After the election of 2006, when I was sworn in in 2007," Bachmann replied, "I was expecting a fairly liberal group of people in Congress. But that's not what I found. I have been pleasantly surprised by a number of my colleagues, who believe in the founding principles we share.["]
Zahn makes no mention of Bachmann's demand (later backed off) that "the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look — I wish they would — take a great look at the views of people in Congress and find out [if] they [are] pro-America or anti-America."
The big news out of Zahn's fluff piece is her suggestion that she might run for president in 2012 if God calls her to do it. We'll let Wonkette handle that one.
MRC's Poor Shows Double Standard on Presidential Children Topic: Media Research Center
Jeff Poor writes in an Aug. 13 MRC Culture & Media Institute article:
Remember when the children of public figures were off-limits in the day-to-day hand-to-hand combat of political warfare?
It's a rule that didn't just applied to the underage children of politicians, but the adult children. Witness the 2008 suspension of MSNBC’s David Shuster for suggesting then-presidential contender Hillary Clinton’s 28-year-old daughter Chelsea Clinton was being “pimped out” by the campaign.
But maybe that rule only applied to Democrats.
Well, no. As we've detailed, Poor's employer was not particularly offended by Shuster's remark; further, the MRC has not only never made any attempt to criticize Rush Limbaugh for his 1990s likening of a then-teenage Chelsea to theWhite House dog, it has sought to portray it as an innocent mistake without providing any substantive evidence to support it. The MRC has also tried to draw false equivalence between the offenses of the daughers of a sitting president with the offenses of the son of a former vice president.
All of which makes any MRC attempt to manufacture offense that children of a conservative politician disproportionately make the news highly hypocritical.
Yet Poor goes on to do that anyway in defense of right-wing Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, writing that "a hateful anti-Bachmann blog" and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann used her son's enrollment in the Teach for America program, a division of AmeriCorps, to criticize Bachmann.
But Poor, as the MRC did before, draws another false equivalence. Bachmann's son was not being criticized for his actions as Chelsea Clinton was -- heck, even Poor couldn't be moved to criticize the son's actions beyond sneering that Teach for America is a "government program." Nor does he disagree with the main point of what the blogger and Olbermann highlighted -- that his participation in such a program presumably runs counter to his mother's right-wing beliefs.
Perhaps Poor should think about holding his fellow conservatives accountable for their attacks on presidential children before he criticizes others.
Shocker: WND Contradicts Itself On Birth Certificate Claim Topic: WorldNetDaily
Has WorldNetDaily decided to stop lyingabout President Obama? On one minor issue, it has.
WND writers have repeatedly suggested or asserted that President Obama cannot be considered a "natural born citizen" because his father was not a U.S. citizen -- in a June 16 column by Joseph Farah, in severalnewsarticles, as well as in a promotional flyer.
But that claim has been debunked ... by WorldNetDaily. In an Aug. 10 WND article, Drew Zahn writes that there are "arguments over just exactly what is a 'natural born' citizen" and that "a consensus on the correct definition of 'natural born citizen' has eluded lawyers and scholars for more than 200 years."
WND was scooped on this claim by, among others, Salon.com, which similarly reported this on Aug. 5. Salon cited the case of U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, in which the Supreme Court "looked into the meaning of 'natural born' in the common law and concluded that a non-citizen's mere presence in the U.S. is enough to make their child, if born here, a natural-born citizen."
Zahn curiously makes no mention of the Wong case in his article -- perhaps it would have undercut previous reporting too much. Zahn also made no mention of WND's previous assertions and suggestions that it was fact that both parents must be citizens to give birth to a "natural born citizen," let alone issue corrections for the false claim.
We've updated our compilation of WND's lies about Obama's birth certificate to detail this false claim as well as WND's refutation of it.
Geller Promotes Dubious 'Honor Killing' Story Topic: Newsmax
In her Aug. 13 Newsmax column, right-wing blogger Pamela Geller touts the story of Fathima Rifqa Bary, an Ohio teenager who ran away from home to a Florida pastor claiming that her parents planned to kill her for converting from Islam to Christianity:
Rifqa Bary is alive. She ran to Florida and escaped the fate her father had in mind for her — unlike Amina and Sarah Said, two Muslim teens in Texas who ran away but returned home at the insistence of their mother, Tissie Said, only to be brutally murdered by their father, Yaser Said, on New Year’s Day 2008.
[...]
Americans don’t understand because the “experts” aren’t telling them. I pray that Rifqa’s defenders bring to the court experts who know about honor killings. Family members who have lost their relatives to honor killings (for less) should be giving testimony.
[...]
Rifqa’s testimony is a plea to the free world to stand for its values and its principles. How far we have fallen when a young woman is pleading to be free in the land of the free, home of the brave.
Rifqa Bary’s life hangs in the balance. The West should do everything in its power to save her.
But Geller is not telling the whole story. As Christianity Today reports (via Richard Bartholomew), Bary's story is being promoted by the pastor who whom she fled, Blake Lorenz, whom the girl found through Facebook, and the parents are telling a much different story:
The attorney representing Bary's mother told Orlando-based 10TV News that they were "allowing [Bary] to explore her Christianity," and that Bary wasn't fearful until she met Pastor Lorenz, who holds Bary tightly throughout the video.
Meanwhile, Sgt. Jerry Cupp with the Columbus missing persons bureau disputes Bary's claims, telling The Columbus Dispatch that Mohamed Bary has known about his daughter's conversion for months and appears to be caring. And today, the attorney for Bary's parents issued a statement that they have never threatened Bary: "If this case is perceived as a clash of religions, it is because Mr. Lorenz recklessly and without authorization put someone else's child in front of television cameras to publicly renounce her previous faith," McCarthy said in the statement. "The parents who love Rifqa are in the best position now to protect her from the mess that Mr. Lorenz has made."
Further, as Bartholomew adds, Lorenz "believes that he receives special personal messages from God about the imminent end of the world," which raises questions about whether he's exploiting Bary to promote his own ministry.
Christianity Today concludes:
Of course, believers can rejoice that this teenager has come to Christ in a cultural context in which it would be difficult to betray her parents' teaching. And if Bary's claims are true, we can also hope that her legal case is handled fairly and wisely, and that she finds support from Christian mentors and friends. But none of this requires that Christians be quick to use Bary's claims to prove that Muslims — in this case, her parents and mosque leaders — are intent on killing Bary because their beliefs make them inherently violent.
That last point is exactly what Geller appears to want to push by ignoring the full story.
It's been a while since we checked in on how WorldNetDaily's anti-gay agenda is doing. Let's have a look, shall we?
An Aug. 14 article asserts that children in a California school district "will be required to undergo a controversial homosexual instruction program," which it calls "indoctrination." And what is in this so-called "mandatory homosexual curriculum for children as young as 5"?
In kindergarten, the schools plan to introduce children to "The New Girl … And Me" by Jacqui Robins. The book is about a young girl who is new at a school and strikes up a friendship with another girl after a popular boy refuses to play with her.
In first grade, students will read "Who is in a Family?" By Robert Skutch. It explores different types of families. One page states, "Robin's family is made up of her dad, Clifford, her dad's partner, Henry, and Robin's cat, Sassy."
Second grade students will read about two homosexual penguins that raise a young chick in the book "And Tango Makes Three" by J. Richardson and P. Parnell.
So WND doesn't want kindergarteners to learn how to make friends with people who aren't popular? We don't get it.
Unlike most previous WND articles on gay issues, this article actually quotes a person defending the program (though not until the 23rd paragraph): "We are not telling anyone what to think. ... We are letting children know that gay people exist and they deserve to be treated with respect, regardless of whether or not you believe that homosexuality is acceptable."
WND does not explain why it's opposed to teaching children that gay people exist and should be treated with the respect given to non-gay people.
Meanwhile, in an Aug. 14 column, Linda Harvey lies about the expansion of federal hate crimes protection to gays, baselessly asserting that it "may lead to prosecution of pastors, Christian leaders and even' Joe-Christian-on-the-street' for having the wrong opinion about homosexuality or cross-dressing."
Harvey also objects to federal funding being used to "train local law enforcement officers in identifying, investigating, prosecuting, and preventing hate crimes," calling them "indoctrination" (there's that word again) and "fascist programs."
This evolves into a rant against "lifeless, effeminate Christianity," "the growing number of paperbacks that feature 'gay' characters who dismantle traditional faith," and Obama administration education official Kevin Jennings, who, according to harvey, thinks "his version of a 'safe school'" in "one free of opposition to sexual perversion."
And in an Aug. 12 column, Peter Sprigg complains about the Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded posthumously to Harvey Milk, calling it "the first time in history that the nation's highest civilian award has been granted primarily on the basis of someone's sex life." Sprigg concludes:
Since Harvey Milk died from an assassin's bullet, over a quarter million American men have died of AIDS, which they contracted because they had sex with other men. What's truly "madness" is that someone whose only claim to fame is that they promoted such deadly behavior should be honored with a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Every man who died of AIDS "had sex with other men"? Tell that to Ryan White.
Newsmax Obfuscates on Health Reform Criticism Topic: Newsmax
An Aug. 14 Newsmax article by David Patten recounts claims by "analysts" that President Obama is unleasing a "litany of misstatements and dubious assertions" regarding health care reform without making clear that those "analysts" are all conservatives who oppose health care reform. Suggesting that partisan conservatives are nonpartisan "experts" and "analysts" is a longtimetrope at Newsmax.
Patten also obfuscates on at least one claim, writing:
The president promised no policyholder will lose his or her current coverage. But a study commissioned by the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank concluded that more than 88 million individuals would have to shift to a new plan, if the current proposals on the table are adopted. Other estimates issued by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Urban Institute estimate the number will be lower, but still in the millions.
The CBO estimate is, in fact, dramatically different from the Heritage-commissioned study (done by the insurer-owned Lewin Group): 2 million would switch from private coverage to a public plan. By saying only that the CBO's estimate was "lower ... but still in the millions," Patten hides the huge disparity.
Needless to say, Patten makes no mention of the "litany of misstatements and dubious assertions" made by health reform critics, i.e., "death panels."
WND's Washington Gets A Tad Misogynistic Topic: WorldNetDaily
In the midst of cribbing from the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy in trying to "draw an analogy or two about lessons we might learn as Americans as we struggle through our own battles with forces of evil: Sauron, Saruman and the ever-present Orcs in the Age of Obama," Ellis Washington drops this hateful little bomb in his Aug. 15 WorldNetDaily column:
First allow me to state emphatically that all lovers of literature should thank God that Tolkien wrote this great epic, "Lord of the Rings," in the 1950s before the miserable, anti-intellectual hags of the feminist movement got their claws into this literary genius. Eowyn isn't some myopic, shrill, angry caricature of a woman like Hillary Rodham Clinton, Michelle Obama, Sen. Barbara Mikulski, Rep. Maxine Waters, or Bella Abzug.
Shockingly, for all of the deranged insults Washington has reguularly hurled President Obama's way, he manages to restrain himself from specifically likening Obama to a Tolkien creature.
One almost has to admire the Capital Research Center's Matthew Vadum for the sheer audacity of admitting that he doesn't have the facts to support his smear of President Obama, yet going ahead with the smear anyway.
In an Aug. 13 Newsmax article suggesting that an advertiser boycott campaign of Glenn Beck's Fox News show spearheaded by the group Color for Change, co-founded by current Obama administration official Van Jones, is "being orchestrated with some high level help from the Obama White House," David Patten quotes Vadum as saying, "I don’t have proof that the White House asked Color of Change to help it fight back against Glenn Beck ... But I wouldn’t be surprised to learn it had. Van Jones has the president’s ear. It’s a few hundred feet from his office at the Council on Environmental Quality to the Oval Office."
Patten, for his part, was presumably more than pleased to have Vadum provide him with such an unsubstantiated smear to report. That, and the relative proximity of Jones' and Obama's office -- a mere football field length away from each other! -- is all the evidence Patten and Vadum offer of this purported scheme.
Patten went on to repeat more dubious claims: a mention of "the recent labeling of town hall protesters as 'un-American'" (false) and an assertion that "the leftwing blogosphere" served as "apologists for the Rev. Wright’s statements of hate against whites and Jews" (unsubstantiated). Patten also dismissed outrage at Beck's assertion that President Obama "is a racist," calling the remark "off hand."
