Newsmax Doesn't Tell Whole Story of FAIR Topic: Newsmax
A Sept. 21 Newsmax article by Dave Eberhart touted a speech by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher at the Federation for America Immigration Reform's (FAIR) recent "Hold Their Feet to the Fire" gathering, noting how "Rohrabacher had come to the FAIR gathering to lend his support to that organization’s President, Dan Stein, who was busy himself sounding the clarion call about allowing the Obama administration to push through any reform that features amnesty."
Eberhart failed to note that FAIR was founded by John Tanton, who has made numerous controversial and arguably racist statements about immigrants. Nor did Eberhart mention that AIR received $1.2 million between 1985 and 1994 from the Pioneer Fund, a foundation that supports the work of white supremacists, eugenicists, and others who seek to prove that genetic differences exist between races.
AIM's NY Times Boycott Site Goes Dormant Topic: Accuracy in Media
Has Accuracy in Media pulled the plug on its New York Times boycott website?
BoycottNYT.com has not been updated since early August. Its chief writer, Don Feder, last posted an item at the end of June. A Sept. 16 WorldNetDaily column by Feder did not mention any connection to AIM or the Times boycott in Feder's bio.
That's probably just as well, since Feder made a hash of things. As we'vedetailed, Feder's work at the Times boycott website was notable more for right-wing screeds filled with misleading claims than anything resembling legitimate, coherent media criticism.
AIM always seemed a bit embarrassed to be associated with Feder's website -- it rarely promoted the site, and never offered a link to it on the AIM front page. Now, AIM seems to be trying to quietly bury it.
Ellis Washington's Radio Host Fluffing Week Topic: WorldNetDaily
It was Radio Host Fluffing Week in Ellis Washington's WorldNetDaily columns this past week.
Washington's Sept. 16 column was yet another act of literary fellatio on Michael Savage (Washington has now declared himself the "authorized biographer for the conservative intellectual" Savage), touting an invitation by the Cambridge Union Society, "the world's oldest and most prestigious debating society," to speak at the British university. Washington asked: "Would he be allowed to debate the team at Cambridge Union Society alone, or would he be paired up with an assortment of radicals, racists and demagogues?" You mean besides Savage?
And the fellatio began:
Savage will be our voice, our representative in a foreign land, our Prometheus … our gladiator in the arena of ideas who will wage intellectual battle against the socialist barbarians who have prevented him from stepping foot on their land.
[...]
Michael, the entire audience of "The Savage Nation" and I beseech thee to go to Cambridge, England. Go to the land of the King James Bible, the land of the Magna Carta, the land of Sir Winston Churchill and present your petition of Due Process, Justice, Liberty, Reason, Freedom and Veritas (truth). Tell our cousins across the pond that PC doesn't mean political correctness, but "perversity correctness," that true freedom of speech means the obligation and willingness to hear those you may passionately disagree with. For to do otherwise makes us all either slave masters or slaves to tyranny.
Washington hiliarously adds: "I don't want to be unduly melodramatic here." But what other reason for existence does Washington have?
Washington gets away from the homoerotic overtones of his creepy fealty to Savage long enough to sing the praises of a different radio host -- Laura Ingraham -- for his Sept. 19 column.
I have been with conservative intellectual Laura Ingraham ever since 2001, when the maiden voyage of "The Laura Ingraham Show" set sail. I am never disappointed when listening to Laura, for she is first a quintessential American. She has a forceful personality and has the intellectual gravitas to delineate her views on a wide variety of subjects (not just politics), without coming off as overbearing or doctrinaire. Indeed, I call Laura the lioness of talk radio.
[...]
America! Let us support the yeoman's work of Laura Ingraham. Indeed, this woman is a real conservative, an American patriot, a God-fearing Christian and the adoptive mother to two beautiful children – Maria (from Guatemala) and Dmitri (from Russia).
Please visit her website at www.LauraIngraham.com and perhaps become a "Laura365" member, or at least sign her "Ten for 10" petition.
Ms. Laura Ingraham, indeed you are the lioness of talk radio. You have that beautiful lion's mane of blond hair and a radiant visage. Roar for the conservative movement, roar for the Constitution, roar against the fascist administration of President Obama, and by all means, Laura … continue to roar for America!
It's good to know that Washington likes girls after all ... we think.
Last week, Salon published an interesting profile of Cleon Skousen, who has emerged as the ideological mentor of Glenn Beck. You will not be surprised to learn that WorldNetDaily loves Skousen as well.
WND is currently including as a bonus for subscribing to its Whistleblower magazine "the book Glenn Beck has been raving about," Skousen's "The 5,000 Year Leap"(also available in the WND store). WND says of the book:
The author explains in clear, concise terms all that came together to create a nation that literally accomplished a 5,000-year leap in progress. Skousen covers in detail what went into the design of the U.S. Constitution, highlighting the original sources for the principles that inspired the United States, and showing how the Founders developed these principles from the studies of Cicero, Locke, Montesquieu, and Adam Smith.
Well, actually, not so much. At Salon, Alexander Zaitchik says of the book:
"Leap," first published in 1981, is a heavily illustrated and factually challenged attempt to explain American history through an unspoken lens of Mormon theology. As such, it is an early entry in the ongoing attempt by the religious right to rewrite history. Fundamentalists want to define the United States as a Christian nation rather than a secular republic, and recast the Founding Fathers as devout Christians guided by the Bible rather than deists inspired by French and English philosophers. "Leap" argues that the U.S. Constitution is a godly document above all else, based on natural law, and owes more to the Old and New Testaments than to the secular and radical spirit of the Enlightenment. It lists 28 fundamental beliefs -- based on the sayings and writings of Moses, Jesus, Cicero, John Locke, Montesquieu and Adam Smith -- that Skousen says have resulted in more God-directed progress than was achieved in the previous 5,000 years of every other civilization combined. The book reads exactly like what it was until Glenn Beck dragged it out of Mormon obscurity: a textbook full of aggressively selective quotations intended for conservative religious schools like Utah's George Wythe University, where it has been part of the core freshman curriculum for decades (and where Beck spoke at this year's annual fundraiser).
Zaitchik goes on to note that "Skousen had authored more than a dozen books and pamphlets on the Red Menace, New World Order conspiracy, Christian child rearing, and Mormon end-times prophecy."
Skousen is also known for another screed, called "The Naked Capitalist," whcih Zaitchik calls "a foundational document of America's NWO conspiracy and survivalist scene" (which makes it somewhat of a surprise that WND doesn't sell it). Indeed, Zaitchik writes that "The Naked Capitalist" is a screed against "the dynastic rich" and "liberal internationalist groups such as the Council on Foreign Relations" (WND sells otherworks that conspiracy-monger about the CFR too, so its failure to stock this is doubly puzzling).
Then again, Skousen's work does have a bit of bad press surrounding it. A highly respected Brigham Young University history professor named Louis C. Midgley reviewed the book in 1971 and was not kind, pointing out that Skousen's personal position seems to me perilously close to the 'exclusive uniformity' which I see in Nazism and in the Radical Right in this country. In fact, his position has echoes of the original Nazi 25-point plan."
As we all know, only Barack Obama gets likened to Nazis (not to mention the Antichrist) at WND these days.
CNS Tries to Link Health Care Reform to Illegal Immigrants Topic: CNSNews.com
We've noted that CNSNews.com has latched onto a conspiracy theory tying together the issues of health care reform. As CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey has summed up: "Illegal immigrants won’t get federal health insurance benefits under Obama’s plan because they won’t be illegal immigrants anymore, they will be legal immigrants." CNS has pushed that conspiracy over the past week.
A Sept. 16 article by Matt Cover gave away the whole thing in its overly long headline: "[Steny] Hoyer Won't Answer Directly Whether Immigration Reform Would Make Current Illegal Aliens Eligible for Federally Subsidized Health Insurance Under Obamacare." Cover followed up the next day in the same vein, asking other senators "whether people who are currently illegal aliens in the United States would become eligible for health insurance subsidies under the proposed health-care reform plan if they were made into legal residents and put on a pathway to citizenship by an immigration reform bill."
CNS then latched onto what it seems to consider its smoking gun on the non-issue: a statement at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute that, as summarized in a Sept. 18 article by Nicholas Ballasy, "llegal immigrants would not get government funded health insurance under his health care reform, but said the debate over that plan underscores the need to legalize illegal immigrants so they can get that coverage."
Of course, all of this is nothing more than an attempt by CNS and its fellow conservatives to attack health care reform by hitching it to another issue conservatives despise, comprehensive immigration reform. As we've noted, CNS has repeatedly and baselessly attacked comprehensive immigration reform as "amnesty."
Shocker: NewsBusters Concedes Fox News Ad Is False Topic: NewsBusters
A Sept. 18 NewsBusters post by Matthew Balan is noteworthy for calling a conservative spade a spade.
Balan writes that "CNN’s Rick Sanchez correctly pointed out that a full-page color ad by the Fox News Channel incorrectly claimed that his network missed the massive September 12 Tea Party rally in Washington, DC," adding that Sanchez "completely discredited the ad’s claim."
The shocking thing here is Balan's deviance from the official Fox News line -- which is, according to Howard Kurtz, that the ad "refers to the other networks' missing the larger story, not failing to cover the demonstration itself -- although the photos suggest that the headline refers to the protest."
Since unmitigated praise for a non-conservative news outlet cannot be allowed to stand at any division of the Media Research Center, Balan makes sure to add that Sanchez "went on to paper over CNN’s own double-standard on covering left-wing protests versus conservative protests." Balan added that "Sanchez also accused Fox News of trying to 'promote' the Tea Parties" -- which Balan doesn't contradict.
Balan asserted that "on March 22, 2003 CNN broadcast 38 separate reports on another anti-Iraq war demonstration," but he offers no count on Fox News' coverage of the 9/12 protests, which included not only numerous reports the day of the protests but organization of the protest by Fox News personnel and heavy promotion of events leading up to the protest -- something that can't be said about CNN's coverage of anti-war protests.
UPDATE: Oh, and the boys of NewsBusters have been silent so far on a video showing a Fox News producer rallying the crowd at the 9/12 protest -- something the "mainstream media" has never been accused of doing at the anti-war protests.
A Sept. 18 Newsmax article by Rick Pedraza carries the headline "Biden: Iran Not a Threat." But at no point in Pedraza's article is Vice President Joe Biden quoted as saying that.
The closest thing to that statement is, "I am less concerned — much less concerned — about the Iranian potential. They have no potential at this moment; they have no capacity to launch a missile at the United States of America." But Pedraza also quotes Biden as saying, "I think we are fully capable and secure dealing with any present or future potential Iranian threat. ... The whole purpose of this exercise we are undertaking is to diminish the prospect of the Iranians destabilizing that region in the world."
By oversimplifying a Biden statement and taking it out of context, Newsmax misleads its readers.
I was at the D.C. rally, and I can tell you that the voices were not shrill, though some of them were at times loud – as well they should have been. But take a cue from Che Prez, because he comes from the ranks of the enemy – the enemy who invented loud and shrill.
You may not be old enough to remember the antics of the hippies in the '60s, but they mastered the art of loud and shrill to move the country irreversibly to the left. Loud and shrill ended the Vietnam War. Loud and shrill kicked the deadly "green movement" into high gear. Loud and shrill reduced God's role to that of a bench player. And loud and shrill brought Barack Hussein Obama out of the manger and into your wallet.
WND Gets It Wrong on Obama, ACORN Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Sept. 18 WorldNetDaily article by Chelsea Schilling repeats numerous misleading and false claims about the relationship between President Obama and ACORN.
Schilling wrote that "in 1992, while he was working as a community organizer in Chicago, Obama headed the Chicago operations of Project Vote!, an ACORN effort to register voters nationally. " In fact, as we've detailed and as Obama's Fight the Smears states, Project Vote was not operated by ACORN at the time.Schilling includes a screenshot of the Fight the Smears page containing that statement, but she failed to include it in her article.
Schilling wrote that in 1995 Obama "sued the state of Illinois on behalf of ACORN to implement the federal 'motor voter' law," failing to mention that ACORN's fellow plaintiffs in the case also included the Department of Justice and the League of Women Voters.Further, Obama was not the onlyattorney representing ACORN; indeed, he was not a lead attorney in the case but, rather, an associate.
Schilling claimed that William Ayers "selected Obama to be the first chairman of the board of the Annenberg Challenge." In fact, the New York Times reported that "according to several people involved, Mr. Ayers played no role in Mr. Obama's appointment."
Schilling wrote that "newspaper evidence shows Obama was a member of the New Party, which sought to elect members to public office with the aim of moving the Democratic Party far leftward to ultimately form a new political party with a socialist agenda." In fact, the Aug. 23 WND article by Aaron Klein that Schilling cites for this claim quotes a New Party official as stating that to his knowledge Obama was not a member of the New Party "in any practical way."
NewsBusters Don't Like Them Furriners Tellin' Them What to Do Topic: NewsBusters
Amy Ridenour complains in a Sept. 17 NewsBusters post that Andrew Sullivan is "not a citizen of the United States," yet he has "been commenting on U.S. domestic policy for the last couple of decades as if he had a citizen's stake in the nation" and "telling us how to arrange our domestic affairs." Sullivan "has been happy to tell Americans how to vote while owing his allegiance to a foreign power," Ridenour writes.
NewsBusters Touts Another Dubious Poll Topic: NewsBusters
A Sept. 17 NewsBusters post by Terry Trippany touts a Towers Perrin survey claiming that, in Trippany's words, "a majority of employers surveyed will reduce benefits resulting from the proposed Democrat Health Care Reform bill that is working its way through Congress if it increases costs." But like the similarly anti-reform Investor's Business Daily poll NewsBusters touted earlier in the week, this survey has some problems.
According to the poll's methdology, "The Tower Perrin Health Care Reform Pulse Survey drew responses from 433 HR and benefit executives from a cross section of midsize and large organizations in the U.S. ... The survey was conducted online in July 2009." Online polling is considered by polling experts to be problematic because participants tend to be self-selecting instead of a true cross-section, skewing results.
A Sept. 17 Newsmax article by Dan Weil claims that a "previously unreleased Treasury Department analysis" concludes that "a cap-and-trade law would cost every American household $1,761 a year — or a national total of nearly $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent."
But the analysis Weil is writing about isn't applicable to the cap-and-trade law currently before Congress.
As Media Matters details, the Treasury memo discusses a proposal that would auction 100 percent of the emissions allowances, which would have generated the "nearly $200 billion a year" Neil references. But the cap-and-trade law currently before Congress provides for giving away 80 percent of those emissions allowances.
Further, both the current legislation proposes, and Obama himself has proposed, methods to reduce the impact of cap-and-trade on consumers -- which is not accounted for in the memo Weil cites. A Congressional Budget Office analysis of the current legislation found that that average cost to households in 2020 is $175 per year when various methods of impact mitigation methods are included.
Weil mentions none of this.
Similarly, a Sept. 17 interview by WorldNetDaily/Radio America's Greg Corombos of Peter Sepp of the National Taxpayers Union touted the memo while failing that it doesn't analyze the bill actually before Congress. Indeed, Sepp distorts things further, claiming that "this should be viewed as the floor of what additional monies taxpayers would have to fork over rather than the ceiling."
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:23 AM EDT
Updated: Thursday, September 24, 2009 11:03 AM EDT
What is with conservatives' weird obession with gay sex?
We've detailed Rush Limbaugh's obsession with it, particularly of the anal variety. Now Erik Rush -- who has previously likened Barack obama to a prison rapist, drops this in his Sept. 17 WorldNetDaily column:
Apparently, shouting at the president is objectionable, but his collectively sodomizing the American people in perpetuity is acceptable as long as it is done with a sense of decorum.
One has to wonder if Rush (either one) is projecting his own creepy fantasies on Obama.
Cliff Kincaid's Sleazy Smear Topic: Accuracy in Media
How consumed with hate is Cliff Kincaid?
It wasn't enough for him to write in a Sept. 17 "AIM Report" that "In their canonization of thet late Senator [Ted] Kennedy, our media failed to note that he left a young woman, Mary Jo Kopechne, to die in the bottom of a submerged car." That's a lie -- we defy Kincaid to point out an example of an encompassing mainstream media obituary of Kennedy that didn't mention it.
But Kincaid wasn't done. He went on to write: "A notorious womanizer, he had left a party, probably a drunken orgy, with this poor girl and his car went off a bridge." [emphasis added]
Why is Kincaid making such an offensive claim about Kennedy that he cannot possibly prove? Why is he driven to tell the most outrageous lies about Kennedy?
We've asked Kincaid to substantiate both of these claims.
