The Kessler-Keane Logrolling Continues Topic: Newsmax
We've detailed the history of logrolling between Newsmax's Ronald Kessler and the American Conservative Union's David Keene -- Kessler gives Keene a platform, Keene gives Kessler an award at CPAC.
The logrolling continues with a March 1 article by Kessler giving Keene yet another platform this time to rebut complaints that CPAC isn't conservative enough, as allegedly evidenced by allowing the gay group GOProud to participate. "Keene sees the divergent views as being emblematic of the conservative movement and a sign of its health," Kessler wrote. He didn't mention, however, that he had just received an award from Keene at CPAC.
Kessler goes on to note that Keene "becomes president of the National Rifle Association in May of next year, in addition to heading the ACU." Look for Kessler to write a lot more about guns in the near future.
Will Kincaid Report the Truth About Bruce Ivins? Topic: Accuracy in Media
Cliff Kincaid has taken himself away from lying about the anti-gay law in Uganda long enough to pen a Feb. 26 Accuracy in Media column running to the defense of Bruce Ivins, whom the FBI declared to be the perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax attacks. Kincaid declared that the evidence against Ivins "is unconvincing and the case should still be considered unsolved," and that the FBI "hounded him until he committed suicide." Kincaid insist that the real culprits behind the anthrax attacks "were Al-Qaeda operatives who were part of a second wave of attacks on the U.S. homeland. But because the FBI went on a media-generated wild goose chase after Hatfill, precious time, leads and evidence were lost. The perpetrators fled the country, were deported for immigration law violations, or are still here."
Kincaid, unsurprisingly, offers no evidence that al-Qaeda did it or that Ivins didn't.
Kincaid might not want to get to close to Ivins, however. The Smoking Gun has obtained FBI documents on its investigation of Ivins:
Ivins was often forthcoming about the details of his strange obsessions and private life. For example, as seen below, when agents executed search warrants in late-2007, an FBI supervisor asked Ivins if he was worried about those raids. Ivins said he was, noting that he did things a "middle age man should not do," adding that his actions would "not be acceptable to most people." He then noted that agents searching his basement would find a "bag of material that he uses to 'cross-dress,'" according to an interview report. During a January 2008 meeting with agents, Ivins described his bizarre decades-long "obsession" with the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, and detailed how he broke into two KKG chapters to steal ritual books used by the group. He also told of "another of his obsessions, blindfolding or bondage." Three months before his suicide, surveillance agents sifted through trash Ivins left at his curb and discovered that the beleaguered scientist was disposing of pornographic magazines, fetish titles, and 15 pairs of stained women's panties. When an FBI lab analysis of the underwear showed that semen was detected on 14 of the garments, a grand jury directive was issued to obtain DNA from Ivins.
Why, it seems that Ivins is almost Henry Hay, whom Kincaid despises with a passion.
Expect Kincaid to either ignore these revelations or defend them as private -- and, more importantly, heterosexual -- proclivities.
Newsmax's Patten Follows GOP Script Topic: Newsmax
David Patten's Feb. 25 Newsmax article on last week's heath care summit carries the headline, "Democrats Move to Ram Healthcare Into Law." That echoes Republican talking points on the issue -- portrayal of a plan to pass heath care reform that has been discussed for months with a majority vote as somehow "ramming it through."
Brent Bozell, Fascist Topic: Media Research Center
Brent Bozell went nuts -- even by the standard of typical right-wing outrage -- over the withdrawal of an invitation for Family Research Council president Tony Perkins to speak at a prayer luncheon at Andrews Air Force Base. From amarch 1 CNSNews.com article by Pete Winn and Karen Schuberg:
Conservative leaders like Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center (the parent organization of CNSNews.com), said it was “truly frightening” that Perkins, a former Marine officer and minister, had been “thrown off a military base, in effect, for expressing his Christian views.”
“This is beyond political correctness,” Bozell told CNSNews.com. “This is flat-out political censorship taking place. And I would wish that the White House would not only condemn it, but flat-out reverse this policy.”
Bozell said Rep. Kingston was correct that Perkins won’t be the only conservative to be censored for his views.
“Today, it’s Tony Perkins. Tomorrow, who is it? Is there someone who says something offensive to the Obama administration and the will of Congress and is told he can’t speak there? Is there somebody who says something that is unacceptable to the Obama administration so he can’t speak at the university?
“My God, this is fascism. This is not America. This is not the country that I grew up in. This is not the kind of ‘change we can believe in.’
Really? Withdrawing an invitation is "fascism"? If that's the standard, then Bozell himself is engaging in fascism by demanding that President Obama fire administration official Harry Knox -- that is, censoring Knox for his views.
In an interesting sidebar, both articles CNS has done on this issue -- the Winn-Schuberg article and a Feb. 26 article by Winn -- note that the disinvitation came after Perkins issued "his position on the military policy on homosexuality." Specifically, Winn wrote on Feb. 26, "the comments that got him in trouble were published on the FRC Web site on Jan. 27, after President Obama delivered his State of the Union address," during which he expressed his desire to repeal the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy regarding gays in the military. But neither article quoted what Perkins actually said:
"At a time of enormous economic challenge, two on-going wars in which Americans are fighting and increased terrorist threats to Americans at home, President Obama seems untethered from that reality as he called on Congress to force the military to allow open homosexuality. As a veteran of the Marine Corps, the timing of the President's call in the midst of two wars shows that he is willing to jeopardize our nation's security to advance the agenda of the radical homosexual lobby.
"The military is a warrior culture for a reason: Our service members wear the uniform to fight and win wars, not serve as liberal social policy guinea pigs. The sexual environment the President is seeking to impose upon the young men and women who serve this country is the antithesis of the successful warfighting culture and as such should be rejected.
So Perkins wasn't disinvited for merely expressing opposition to DADT; he engaged in a rant that willfully distorted the intention of Obama's words. Further, if supporting repeal of DADT is all it takes to be a member of "the radical homosexual lobby," as Perkins suggests, then Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and even Dick Cheney are a part of it.
Is Perkins willing to condemn Mullen, Gates and (most especially) Cheney as harshly as he attacks Obama? We'll beleive it when we see it.
Another Torrent of Obama Derangement from WND's Ringer Topic: WorldNetDaily
Robert Ringer spews forth yetanothertorrent of Obama-hate in his Feb. 26 WorldNetDaily column, calling President Obama a "Duplicitous Despot" and taking extra care to smear Michelle Obama.
Ringer asserted that Michelle Obama was "given strict instructions to suppress the Angela Davis rhetoric and play the Hillary Makeover Card" during her recent interview with Fox News' Mike Huckabee, and that Huckabee "lobbed her set-up questions specifically aimed at giving her the opportunity to override just about every angry, anti-American statement she's ever made":
One of Michelle Obama's more infamous past statements was that America is a country that is "just downright mean." A mere slip of the tongue, right? Enter Mike Huckabee, who lobbed her a warm-and-fuzzy pitch that gave her the opportunity to say that America is "a really cool country with some really great people all over the place."
Angela … er, Michelle … then went on to say, "It's decent, it's kind. I love my country." You could just hear Karl Marx and Saul Alinsky in their graves: "Heh, heh, heh."
It was enough to make a refined person lose his lobster and caviar.
Not that Ringer is one of those "refined persons," of course.
Ringer then goes on to assert that this interview has disqualified Huckabee from running for president:
Mike Huckabee's Slick Willie cleverness makes him hard to pin down, but his interview with Michelle Obama connected a lot of the dots for me. I once speculated that Mike Huckabee could possibly get the Republican nomination without the support of the Republican Party's conservative base if he could put together a coalition of evangelicals and disenfranchised independents and liberal Democrats.
Today, I'm here to tell you to forget about that theory. It won't happen. By interviewing Michelle Obama on his show – apparently without concern for Rush Limbaugh's recent chest pains – he lost any chance he may have had for gaining the Republican nomination.
How does Ringer live with all the hatred that's raging inside him? He's going to turn into the next Norman Liebmann if he's not careful.
Graham Not Big on Having an Informed Electorate Topic: NewsBusters
Tim Graham seems to prefer his voters to be stupid and uninformed.
In a Feb. 22 NewsBusters post, Graham complains about a Newsweek poll that asked about Obama's health care reform plan without describing its contents, and found that a near-majority was opposed to it. Then, when respondents were informed about the contents of the plan, more supported the plan than opposed it.
This was a "push poll," Graham huffed: "It’s just like Newsweek calling up people and insisting they should really support ObamaCare, because it embraces abstract liberal principles like requiring insurance companies to insure everyone."
Why does Graham prefer to scaremonger about health care reform? Because people actually like what's in it once you tell them.
Depiction-Equals-Approval Fallacy Watch Topic: Media Research Center
Sarah Knoploh embraces the Depiction-Equals-Approval Fallacy in a Feb. 26 MRC Culture and Media Institute item, claiming that a Washington Post article on a Minnesota abortion provider who travels to South Dakota to perform abortions "not only turned Ball into a hero, but sympathized with her 'difficult' situation." Knoploh also stated that the Post "quoted the clinic director, sympathizing further with the pro-abortion side of South Dakota’s controversy."
That's right -- Knoploh is asserting that a news outlet merely quoting someone means that said outlet endorses whatever that person has to say.
Knoploh insisted the article shows that "Pushing a liberal pro-abortion agenda is nothing new for the Post"; one of the examples she provides is of the post "featur[ing] a medical student’s opinions about why she supported abortion in June 2009." A total of three stories over two years were cited, but Knoploh offers no explanation of how three stories over two years equate to compelling evidence of a "pro-abortion agenda."
Knoploh also demonstrated the right wing's continuing obsession with slain abortion doctor George Tiller, complaining that, in insisting ath that "Other mainstream media outlets have pushed the same ["pro-abortion"] agenda," that TV networks "only referred to Tiller’s death as deadly, while ignoring the violent nature of abortions." You may recall that Knoploh and her fellow CMI writer Colleen Raezler effectivelycondoned Tiller's murder by complaining that news outlets failed to "help their audience understand why this man was targeted."
Farah Endorses His Corrupt Buddy for Congress Topic: WorldNetDaily
In his Feb. 27 WorldNetDaily column, Joseph Farah touts is friend Richard Pombo for a congressional seat in California:
I know Pombo well.
There is no one who stands taller for liberty and the Constitution than him.
He cannot be bought. He cannot be co-opted. He is not capable of falling under the spell of the Beltway insiders.
He's just the real deal – a Portuguese cowboy, fifth-generation California rancher who learned about federal attacks on property rights firsthand.
For a guy who supposedly "cannot be bought ... cannot be co-opted" and "is not capable of falling under the spell of the Beltway insiders," Pombo spent a lot of time hanging around bribers and Beltway insiders -- not to mention more than a little self-dealing.
Pombo was videotaped claiming that disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff "never once lobbied me on anything." The AP promptly discovered in billing records that Abramoff had contacted Pombo personally twice, and his associates many more times.
Pombo's staff appeared frequently in Team Abramoff e-mails discussing free seats at sporting and entertainment events. For example, two tickets to WWF Backlash Live went to Pombo's press secretary in April 2000. Pombo was an important target of Abramoff because of his seat on -- and eventual chairmanship of, thanks to Tom DeLay -- the House Committee on Natural Resources.
Watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington in 2006 prepared an epic thirteen-count ethics complaint against Pombo, for among, other charges, potentially violating "federal bribery laws by providing legislative assistance to Indian tribes in exchange for contributions to his campaign and political action committee, RICH PAC."
He was criticized for taking a two-week RV tour of the national parks in 2003 -- and billing the taxpayer for rental fees. Even though his family came along for the ride, Pombo maintained, "It was not a personal trip."
Also in the good-to-be-related-to-the-congressman file: Pombo paid his wife and brother $357,325 over four years from his campaign fund for fundraising, consulting, and other unspecified services. The Los Angeles Times reported in 2005 that his impressive total put him in league with Tom DeLay.
In 2004, he sent over 100,000 fliers touting President Bush's environmental agenda -- and that of Resources committee members facing tough reelection bids. One recipient described the letters, which were paid for by the government, as "veiled campaign literature."
After leaving Congress, Pombo, long the archenemy of the environmentalist movement, got a gig with PR firm Pac/West Communications, which had worked with the congressman over the years on efforts like loosening restrictions on logging in national forests.
Further, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington named Pombo to its list of most corrupt members of Congress in 2005.
But you've never read about any of this at WND -- as we pointed out, Farah and Co. hid Pombo's misdeeds from its readers. All the better for Farah to construct a revisionist history of Pombo's 2006 loss:
Maybe, you say, "Farah, if Pombo is that good, how did he get beat in 2006?"
The answer is simple: Pombo was targeted by millions of dollars from environmental extremist groups who wanted to rid Washington of their No. 1 enemy. Pombo spent most of his time in Washington trying to overhaul one of the most dangerous pieces of legislation in the history of our country – the Endangered Species Act.
Nah, Pombo's ethical problems had nothing to do with it. And if Joseph Farah had his way, you'd never hear about them.
UPDATE: Farah also attempts to fleece his readers by plugging autographed copies of the book he wrote with Pombo, "This Land Is Your Land," for a whopping $99, adding: "Sorry, it's now a limited collector's item." Actually, it's not that limited -- you can buy a good used copy through Half.com for as little as 75 cents. And ifyou simply must have it autographed, there's one for $1.09.
Think Progress caught up with the Western Journalism Center's Caleb Heimlich at CPAC, where he was doing the bidding of his boss, Floyd Brown, by promoting Brown's campaign to impeach President Obama. Heimlich couldn't come up with any imeachable offenses specifically identified in the Constitution, instead essentially admitting that the effort is rooted in little more than policy differences.
We've already detailed the lies and distortions in Brown's impeachment drive.
Meanwhile, the WJC, far from doing anything involving actual journalism, is mostly content to rehash attacks on the media from other right-wing websites, combined with the occasional smear job, like one asserting that Obama is "stupid and lazy."
And lest anyone think this is about anything other than the aggrandizement of its leader, a graphic onthe WJC front page plugs Floyd Brown's availability for speaking gigs:
If you're curious, Brown's fee ranges between $1,000 and $5,000 depending on the location of the speech, and he "requires reimbursement for transportation and lodging."
AIM Ignores Money-Losing Right-Wing Papers Topic: Accuracy in Media
A Feb. 25 Accuracy in Media blog post by Don Irvine highlights how the Washington Post Co. is seeing increased profits even though the Washington Post itself is losing money. Irvine adds, "Unlike other large city newspapers where decisions have been made to shutter the print version and move online, the Post will continue as long as the other operations can subsidize the paper even if it's not a good business decision."
Irvine doesn't mention the fact that there are several papers that continue to operate even though they have lost money for years. Perhaps because the prime examples of such -- the New York Post, the Washington Times and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review -- are all conservative-leaning, kept in business only because of the grace of their deep-pocketed, conservative-leaning owners.
WND Falsely Claims NY Times Called CPAC Speaker 'Racist' Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Feb. 25 WorldNetDaily article by Alyssa Farah falsely claimed that a New York Times article about CPAC stated "that one of the addresses there turned racist."
In fact, the Times article in question, on Jason Mattera's speech, does not contain the word "racist." Rather, it states that Mattera used "racial stereotypes" in his speech. Farah gave Mattera ample space to bash the Times, but made no apparent attempt to seek out a response from the Times.
Farah goes on to do her father's duty in echoing his criticism of allowing a group of gay conservatives to co-sponsor CPAC, even quoting gay-hater extrordinaire Cliff Kincaid.Farah also repeats her father's lament that he wasn't allowed to bring his birther rant to CPAC.
Newsmax Columnist Likens Obama to Glenn Close in 'Fatal Attraction' Topic: Newsmax
"Fatal Attraction," the Washington version is playing on a television near you as Obama's bipartisan summit on healthcare approaches. Like a possessed, rejected maniac the president refuses to allow the idea of a massive restructuring of our healthcare system to fade.
You're just not that into his healthcare bill? Too bad. He won't be ignored.
Obama is hoping that by rebranding and reworking the old, rejected versions of the House and Senate bill into an even scarier narrative coupled with a televised meeting, the pressure will be so intense that he can kidnap the handful of Republican votes he needs to catapult this monstrosity over the finish line.
To get our attention, Democrats attempted legislative suicide. After laying low, they're back again, and like any prey dealing with a psycho, Republicans are nervous.
They understand that this is a carefully calculated public relations gimmick designed to force their hand. They know that if they don't show up, the images of empty chairs across the table from their caucus will be used, repeatedly, to paint them as unwilling to govern and to target them in campaign ads as obstructionists. Forget alerting the wife, the White House is going to out your bad behavior on C-SPAN. In other words: this is blackmail, Beltway style.
Like any concerned observer frightened for my friend's life, as well as my own, I urged Republicans to set some terms and not accept the invitation to the president's gathering unless he agreed to start over. Apparently, Mr. Obama was in favor of a second chance for the relationship and demonstrated his willingness by crafting a more expensive and politically explosive version of the first health care bill -- just on his own terms (so much for bipartisanship).
[...]
With each passing week that the president ignores jobs, choosing to focus on his obsession and an unprecedented legislative trick to stalk the public into a submitting to a relationship they don't want, the more he looks like a lunatic who has escaped the asylum, just waiting to surprise you outside your window, in the rain on your fire escape until you relent.
What has become evident to everyone except the Democratic leadership is that the American majority has no interest in a relationship so dysfunctional, so unstable, so completely unhealthy.
Obama has stumbled many times trying to get his way. Act Two of heath care reform might be his biggest mistake on the issue yet. In an effort to hit a button to reset the process, he might have hit the one that just blew it up. Like any good horror film, the element that's most despised just won't die. Let's hope we can finish health care off before anyone gets hurt.
-- Andreea Tantaros, Feb. 24 Newsmax column (full version at FoxNews.com)
NewsBusters Touts Fear-Mongering Doctor Topic: NewsBusters
A Feb. 25 MRC Business & Media Institute article by Jeff Poor uncritically repeats claims by Fox News' Marc Siegel alleging "unintended consequences" to health care reform. Unfortunately for Poor, Siegel is hardly a reliable source for claims on health care reform.
Media Matters has documented Siegel's history of false claims and fear-mongering on health care reform -- for instance, repeating false claims about the end-of-life counseling that had been in the bill at one point.Siegel is not a dispassionate analyst on the issue but a full-fledged activist, having encouraged doctors to quit the American Medical Association over reform.
Poor makes no effort to analyze what Siegel says, instead suggesting that Siegel's presentation of "some of the myths surrounding the proposed political solutions for health care in the United States" is correct and authoritative -- for which there is no evidence presented to support. Poor repeats Siegel's agitation for tort reform without mentioning that, as the Washington Post's Ezra Klein has noted, there is already some tort reform in the bill.
Earlier this week, Media Matters detailed the virulent Muslim-bashing at CPAC's "Jihad: The Political Third Rail" event, co-hosted by Pamela Geller and featuring one speaker's assertion that "[r]ape is also a part of" Muslims' efforts to convert non-Muslims in Europe and that and that "[d]emocracy is being deliberately removed" from the European Union by "incorporating Muslim countries of North Africa and the Middle East in the European Union." (Not to mention Geller's own charming description of Umar Abdulmutallab as "the Christmas balls bomber.")
Geller, of course, has been a columnist at Newsmax for the past several months, where she regularly spewed her anti-Muslim and anti-Obama venom. Newsmax, you may recall, has had some issues in recent months with columnists going a bit over the top -- advocating a military coup against Obama, calling for a allegedly figurative "tenting" of the White House to kill the "varmints" inside, etc. -- prompting some hasty columndeletions.
We were going to ask if Geller's CPAC hate-fest was acceptable to Newsmax, but it seems that question has already been answered. The latest Geller column in the Newsmax archive is from February 10 -- which means it removed a February 16 column in which Geller smeared Obama as a "weakling," "jihad-enabling," and, finally, "President L-dopa" because "Obama is to American people what L-Dopa was to Oliver Sacks' patients." (Here's the Newsmax column in Google cache, and here's a version of it at Big Government, which apparently has no problem with Geller's vicious insults.)
Geller's name has also been removed from Newsmax's blog page, which is another clue that she's been terminated. Newsmax, of course, has not said a word about either the retraction or the termination to its readers.
Anyone familiar with Geller's long record of inflammatory comments could have seen this outcome as inevitable -- indeed, that's what we predicted would happen. The question is why Newsmax believed that such hatred deserved to be enshrined in a column on its website in the first place.
Farah: CPAC Doesn't Hate Gays Enough Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah takes the Cliff Kincaid route by endorsing Ryan Sorba's anti-gay rant at CPAC in his Feb. 25 WorldNetDaily column: "Sorba rightfully condemned the conference for accepting sponsorship from a group promoting an agenda totally at odds with conservatism – and, more importantly, at odds with Judeo-Christian morality and Western civilization." Farah continued:
Let me remind you what Sorba was condemning – the notion of same-sex marriage.
Same-sex marriage has been overwhelmingly rejected by popular vote everywhere it has been put to the test.
Barack Obama cannot even say he supports same-sex marriage, not because he doesn't, but because it is so politically unpopular.
I would suggest to you that at least 90 percent of Americans reject same-sex marriage.
But "conservatives" don't?
That's just the practical politics side of the equation. Listen to those booing Ryan Sorba and you are headed for political disaster.
[...]
There is nothing "conservative" or even libertarian about permitting government to rewrite a 6,000-year-old God-given institution.
It's very disturbing that CPAC leadership would not see that, and equally disturbing that so many young attendees would not understand how they are compromising with the eternal truths "conservatives" should be "conserving."
Farah, of course, is a virulent gay-hater. But there's more going on as well -- remember that Farah was blocked from pushing his birther agenda at CPAC.
So it seems that Farah's real problem is that CPAC hates birthers more than it hates gays.
