Simon Maloy at Media Matters does a fine job of demolishing Tim Graham's insistence in an Oct. 21 NewsBusters post that a Washington Post poll showing majority support for a public option is biased or otherwise "stuffing its poll sample" because more respondents identified themselves as Democrats than Republicans. Graham, it seems, is unaware of the concept of random sampling, or the recent documented decline in people identifying themselves as Republicans.
Indeed, the poll's Repubican/Demmocrat split is not out of line with contemporaneus polling based on random sampling.
Dick Morris' Mysterious Polling Firm Topic: Newsmax
In his Oct. 19 Newsmax column, Dick Morris proclaimed that a "national survey conducted for the League of American Voters by the Global Marketing Research Center during last week shows that 46 percent of those who watch Fox News 'just about every day' are Democrats or independents as are 50 percent of those who watch it 'several times each week' or more."
Morris' numbers are dubious at best, falling well outside of what most other polls have found about Fox News viewers -- namely, that they skew heavily Republican. But what's more interesting is the polling firm Morris cites.
The Global Marketing Research Center has no website of its own that we could find, and Google comes up with nothing -- indeed, the only references to this firm come from websites referencing Morris' study.
Further, neither the League of American Voters nor Newsmax have posted the full poll results, including the questions asked, so it's impossible to tell just how legitimate Morris' little poll is.
Corsi's Grand Unification Obama Theory Topic: WorldNetDaily
We've noted Aaron Klein's attempt to develop a grand unification theory of purported Obama scandals. Now fellow WorldNetDaily writer Jerome Corsi is developing his own as well. From Corsi's Oct. 20 WND article:
Attacking Fox News and defending President Obama is a family affair for Anita Dunn, the White House communications director who has blasted Fox as an arm of the Republican Party and talked about "controlling" the news media.
She's married to Robert Bauer, the chief of the political law group at Perkins Coie, the Seattle law firm hired by the White House to defend Obama in court cases challenging his "natural born" citizenship status and thus, his eligibility under the U.S. Constitution to be president.
Yes, they're that desperate over at WND. Remember, WND and Joseph Farah ran this same playbook against Bill Clinton.
Bernard Kerik became the first NYPD commissioner to land in jail Tuesday after a judge revoked his bail for trying to taint the jury pool in his upcoming corruption trial.
Newsmax has run a wire article on the development, but thus far no slobbering,whitewash defense of Kerik, as Newsmax is prone to do.
An Oct. 19 WorldNetDaily article by Aaron Klein is another attack on the Jewish lobbying group J Street, whom Klein claims is "accused of working against the Jewish state."
It's at least a slightly less antagonistic description of J Street than his previous outing, in which he called it "a far-leftist Mideast activist organization."
Klein seems to have lifted much of his "research" on J Street from right-wing blogs such as Powerline and Hot Air, neither of which he identifies as right-wing -- even though he makes sure to point out that J Street "mostly is led by left-leaning Israelis." Klein also complains that "far-leftist Israelis are influential in the J Street leadership," offering as an example former Knesset Speaker Avrum Burg. Interestingly, Burg was injured in a 1983 grenade attack that killed Israeli peace activist Emil Grunzweig. The attacker, Yona Avrushmi, has been described as a right-wing activist. (And we know how Klein loves his violent right-wing activists.)
At no point does Klein explain why Burg is defined as "far-leftist" beyond having once stated that "to define the State of Israel as a Jewish state is the key to its end."
Also, at no point does Klein indicated that he contacted J Street to give it an opportunity to respond to the attacks he published. As a poor substitution, he quotes from a J Street "e-mail to supporters blaming 'neoconservatives and their Swift Boat tactics'" for causing some members of Congress to drop out of attending an upcoming dinner.
Of course, with this unfair, unbalanced attack, that's exactly what Klein is doing.
CNS' NFL-Dumping 'Major Auto Dealer' Not So Major Topic: CNSNews.com
An Oct. 20 CNSNews.com article by Matt Cover tells the story of Mark Muller, a "major auto dealer" in Kansas City who has decided he will never attend another NFL game -- he claims to be "a Kansas City Chiefs season ticket holder since the 1980s" -- "because the league did not stand up for Limbaugh when Limbaugh's recent attempt to purchase part of the St. Louis Rams’ franchise came under fire from critics." But Muller is not quite the "major auto dealer" Cover depicts him as -- and he's not actually in Kansas City, either.
Muller's dealership, Max Motors, is based in Butler, Missouri -- 60 miles away from Kansas City. He may be a "major auto dealer," but only compared to other dealers in and near Butler (population 4,209). Max Motors has an outlet in Harrisonville, Mo., which is a mere 30 miles away from KC.
New Article: James Walsh's Immigrant Problem Topic: Newsmax
The Newsmax columnist has a severe animosity toward immigrants, legal and otherwise. He also likes to make up false claims about Democrats. Read more >>
Janet Porter can usually be counted on to regurgitate the right-wing anti-Obama line, and she doesn't disappoint in her Oct. 20 WorldNetDaily column, mindlessly repeating demonstrably false attacks.
She starts off by declaring the Obama administration to be "downright evil" -- and lying about Anita Dunn, asserting that Dunn "says Mao Zedong as one of the two people she turns to most." In fact, Dunn saiud that Mao and Mother Teresa are "the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point, which is, you're going to make choices."
Porter also claims that Dunn "told the Dominican government that she and the Obama campaign 'absolutely control[ed]' the media. They control what's reported and how." Another falsehood; as we detailed, Dunn was talking about the campaign managing media coverage of Obama, which every major political campaign attempts to do.
Porter writes of the Obama Whiteh House's attacks on Fox News: "They don't like that Fox News standard of: 'We report, you decide.' No, they want it to be "You report what we decide." Of course, the Bush White House similarly attempted pushed back against coverage it didn't like as well -- primarily targeting the New York Times -- but Porter fails to mention that.
NewsBusters Joins in Seeking Revenge on Olbermann Topic: NewsBusters
The Washington Examiner's Diana West is not the only right-winger looking to target Keith Olbermann's gig hosting an NFL pregame show as revenge for Rush Limbaugh not being able to buy the St. Louis Rams -- NewsBusters is hopping aboard the revenge train as well.
An Oct. 18 post by Noel Sheppard highlighted Juan Williams' complaint on "Fox News SUnday" about Olbermann, that he says "Conservatives are terrible, they're a bunch of jerks, blah-de-blah. And then he's announcing the game. Nobody says, 'Well, because he makes divisive statements he can't announce an NFL game.' I don't see that.
Jeff Poor followed with an Oct. 19 post (and MRC Business & Media Institute item) repeating Williams' statement, adding, "that's something Williams is dead-spot on with, if you take a closer look at Olbermann's nightly MSNBC show." Poor then complains about how Olbermann likes to bash conservatives in his nightly "Worst Person in the World" segment, which Poor says is "nothing but conservative-bashing sessions meant to appeal to his rabid left-wing viewers."
Like West, Poor bashes Olbermann for calling Michelle Malkin "a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it" but holds Malkin curiously blameless for siccing her hateful readers on an innocent person.
What Williams, Sheppard and Poor all seem to have missed (or are deliberately avoiding trying to mention) is that there's a key difference between Limbaugh and Olbermann: Olbermann limits his attacks to politics, doesn't attack NFL players, and has not been identified as making such remarks on his Sunday night NFL preview show, while Limbaugh leveled race-based criticism against an NFL player (Donovan McNabb) on an NFL pregame show.
Vadum Tries to Smear Us Topic: Capital Research Center
In an Oct. 20 ACORN-bashing piece at the American Spectator, the Capital Research Center's Matthew Vadum curiously links to this very blog as an example of "so-called fact-checking operations that follow ACORN" who allegedly "a more much flexible definition for 'lie.'" No specific item, mind you -- just the blog itself, thus making this a dubious smear against us.
Why? We're not sure -- we haven't written all that much about ACORN. Perhaps Vadum is ticked off at use because we've repeatedly caught him in his own fair share of lies:
We've corrected Vadum's frequent false assertion that ACORN operated Project Vote in 1992 when Barack Obama was affiliated with Project Vote.
We've busted Vadum for playing fast and loose with ACORN numbers, insisting that the group is "eligible" to receive billions from the stimulus bill while burying the fact that ACORN would likely receive only a small fraction, if any, of it.
We've documented Vadum peddling falsehoods and distortions about Media Matters.
We've caught him making a false claim that he would have avoided had he done some basic research. (Vadum only grudgingly corrected it.)
Is this a guy who has earned the right to complain about the research of others? We think not.
The White Rose letters were simple, but scathing indictments of the Nazi anti-Semitic genocide, and the loss of German life in the war. But most eloquently, the White Rose demanded that, for their own honor's sake, Germans, themselves, repudiate their support of Hitler so they would not carry the eternal shame as a nation of having marched for Hitler until the allies defeated the Reich utterly.
We do not yet pay a high price for speaking out against the communist takeover of our country by the revolutionary Obama administration, under the glazed gaze of a nearly corrupt Congress. The effort it takes to strike a keyboard is all we expend. The letters of the White Rose were written, printed and mailed by ordinary citizens who knew that, at each step, they were risking torture and execution if they were caught.
History looks at the rise and fall of the Third Reich and wonders how oceans of rational human beings could participate in such an obvious regime of atrocity. Will history judge us the same way?
Newsmax Fearmongers About Flu Vaccine Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax has joined WorldNetDaily in spreading fearmongering about flu vaccines.
In an Oct. 16 email sent to the Newsmax mailing list, Dr. Russell Blaylock -- whose "Blaylock Wellness Report" is published by Newsmax -- sought to scare his readers:
Take government's aggressive promotion of the swine flu vaccination . . .
Flu vaccinations contain a full dose of mercury, the most toxic substance known to man.
No amount of mercury is safe. Even very small amounts can weaken your immune system.
Vaccinations also cause brain inflammation. And severe brain inflammation will lead to . . .
Behavioral problems and language difficulties in children!
Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases in adults!
Like someone trying to deflect blame, Blaylock is accusing others of fearmongering:
When the swine flu story first broke, experts warned that it could be the worst flu since the 1918 pandemic that killed more than 50 million people worldwide, including 700,000 Americans.
But who were these experts?
People on the pharmaceutical and government payroll, that's who. They said it was the most unusual virus they had ever seen . . . that it could kill in large numbers . . .
Overnight, a compliant media spread this alarming news was spread far and wide.
[...]
he Chicken Little doomsayers (read "drug company executives") were disappointed in these statistics. But now they're back scaring the public again, saying the "big event" is coming this winter!
And surprise of all surprises, drugmaker Novartis has a swine flu vaccine all ready to go. And the company says it won't give the vaccine away to the poor. Everybody must pay!
Imagine if it could sell 2 billion doses worldwide and get $5 a piece for them. That's $10 billion.
Neat trick. But to succeed, it will need governments around the world insisting that their citizens get vaccinated while using taxpayer money to buy the vaccine for the poor.
Washington is on board. Can you guess why?
Big Pharma is the biggest contributor to Washington politicians -- both Democrats and Republicans. President Obama himself collected $1.2 million during his presidential campaign.
Blaylock goes on to advise people to "avoid flu shots, and if you've had them in the past, to take nutrients that will strengthen your immune system and reduce inflammatory cytokine activity."
In fact, the H1N1 flu brings on "lung inflammation and respiratory failure" in its victims, who tend to be relatively young compared to the elderly who typically succumb to typical seasonal flu. Does that sound like something that can be warded off with a handful of nutrients?
Of course, Blaylock is not doing this merely out of the goodness of his heart. He has subscriptions to his newsletter to sell: "just 13 cents a day. That's not a misprint -- I really mean just 13 cents a day!" But even after his sales pitch, he's not done scaremongering:
Also in your FREE report, Vaccinations and Brain Injuries -- Are You at Risk? you'll find out . . .
Why many doctors refuse to take the same vaccines they recommend to their patients!
How better nutrition and sanitation, not vaccines, wiped out childhood diseases in this country!
Why studies showing that vaccines weaken the immune system have been suppressed!
Why parents are told their children need 36 to 40 shots before attending school, even though frequent vaccination can cause brain damage!
Why seniors are told to get flu shots every year, even though repeated vaccination can lead to Parkinson's and Alzheimer's!
It seems that Blaylock's fearmongering may very well end up be responsible for flu deaths in people he scared into not getting a vaccine.
Thanks to P.J. Gladnick, NewsBusters is no longer allowed to cite humor or context to defend conservatives.
In an Oct. 16 post, Gladnick ridiculed Robert Reich's claim that his statements that an honest politician would make about health care, repeated by conservatives, were a "mock exercise" taken out of context. Gladnick called Reich's explanation "lame" and insisted that Reich was speaking in context.
Similarly, in a Oct. 17 post, Gladnick rejected Anita Dunn's explanation that her referencing of Mao Zedong with Mother Teresaas her favorite philosophers "was intended as irony," retorting, "You peons just don't have the mental ability to see that Anita Dunn was merely being ironic despite the fact that was absolutely nothing in her facial expression, vocal tone, nor in what she said that displayed the slightest sense of irony. In fact, she was dead serious as you can plainly see in the video of her speech."
Gladnick went on to dismiss both Reich and Dunn as offering "incredibly lame excuses those on the left come up with to try to explain away statements they made that have come back to haunt them."
The problem here is that humor and context are lame excuses NewsBusters has used to defend conservative remarks, particularly those by Rush Limbaugh.
An December 2008 post by Kathleen McKinley, for instance, complains about "leftwing bloggers" who don't understand that the "Barack the Magic Negro" song Limbaugh has frequently played on his show is an "example of Rush being a racist" rather than the parody it was purportedly meant to be.
An Oct. 12 post by Matthew Balan lamented that "Limbaugh has been taken out of context yet again by the mainstream media" -- a lament he repeated in an Oct. 15 post.
Well, no more. Thank you, P.J. Gladnick, for dismantling those excuses as a conservative defense.
Examiner's West Unclear On the Concept Topic: Washington Examiner
It appears that right-wingers are out for revenge over Rush Limbaugh getting squeezed out of a deal to buy the St. Louis Rams, and they're turning their ire toward (who else) Keith Olbermann.
And that's pretty much the way Diana West put in her Oct. 18 Washington Examiner column:
I will start with two words: Keith Olbermann. In addition to his nightly gig on MSNBC -- a numbing blend of Leftist politics and something approaching Tourette's Syndrome -- Keith Olbermann is a co-host of NBC's "Football Night in America," the pre-game show that leads into "Sunday Night Football." Naturally, that would be Sunday night NFL football.
This job makes Olbermann a public face of the NFL. And a public face of the NFL with many filthy things coming out of it. These include his recent pronouncement that Limbaugh claiming his own success paved the way for Glenn Beck is "is like congratulating yourself for spreading syphilis."
We could slap a headline on that -- "NFL talker compares star radio and TV conservatives to venereal disease" -- only trash talk against conservatives doesn't generate mainstream outrage.
Take Olbermann's noxious attack this week on Michelle Malkin for what he characterized as her "total mindless, morally bankrupt, knee-jerk, fascistic hatred without which Michelle Malkin would just be a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it."
Get that? Olbermann calls an accomplished and best-selling conservative author, commentator, blogger, wife and mother (who also happens to be beautiful) a "big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick," but such dehumanizing venom doesn't count as controversial, or even lightly strain his NBC-NFL connection.
First, West overlooks the obvious point that Olbermann's harsh words weren't directed to anyone in the NFL -- unlike Limbaugh, who infamously complained that Donovan McNabb was overrated as a quarterback because the media wanted a black QB to succeed. That claim has largely gone unsupported, and West curiously fails to reference it.
Second, West falsely suggests that Olbermann bashed Malkin apropos of noting, omitting what it was Malkin did to provoke it. As the Washington Post describes it, Malkin sicced her readers on author Charisse Carney-Nunes regarding a YouTube video of children singing the praises of Barack Obama, even though she had nothing to do with the song:
She knew Malkin had driven criticism of President Obama's back-to-school speech, streamed nationwide, as an attempt to indoctrinate students. Now Malkin was asking about a YouTube video of New Jersey public school children singing and enthusiastically chanting about Obama from a Black History Month presentation.
By nightfall, Carney-Nunes's name was playing on Fox News and voice mails on her home phone and cellphone were clogged with the furious voices of strangers. The e-mails kept pouring in, by the hundreds, crammed with words spam filters try to catch: She was a "nappy-headed" traitor; she would lose her job and go to jail; she was Leni Riefenstahl, the filmmaker who glorified Hitler.
[...]
Carney-Nunes, swept up in a viral tornado of vitriol, had nothing to do with the children's song. She was doing an author's reading in the school that day.
Olbermann may have been over the top, but doesn't inciting people against an innocent person deserve some kind of response? West apparently doesn't think so, at least as long as the inciting is done in the service of bashing Obama.
