WND Still Misleading About Street Preacher's Protest Topic: WorldNetDaily
A March 2 WorldNetDaily article by Bob Unruh perpetuates previous false and misleading claims by WND regarding a 2007 incident involving a street preacher's disruption of a gay event in Elmira, New York.
Unruh asserts that street preacher Julian Raven was merely "praying in a public park" when he was arrested for disorderly conduct. He parrots the Alliance Defense Fund's account of the incident, which claims that Raven and his followers "made their way to an area in front of the stage and began to pray silently while lying prostrate in the grass."Unruh made no effort to obtain new reaction to the story, though he repeats a quote from a police officer first gathered in 2007.
In fact, as we've detailed, Raven has a history of disruptive behavior, and his preaching style has been described as "zealous and militant."And portraying the incident as merely "praying in a public park" is highly misleading -- it was done in front of a stage at the event with the apparent goal of disrupting it. Why else would you stage such a stunt in front of a stage?
As we've also detailed, the fine Raven faces for his disorderly conduct is $100 plus court costs. The ADF has in all likelihood spent many times more than this defending an obviously guilty man than it would if it had paid the fine out of its (or WND's) petty cash drawer.
AIM Chief Reads Us At CPAC Topic: Accuracy in Media
We've finally gotten a hold of video from Accuracy in Media's CPAC award ceremony in which Andrew Breitbart says he wants to hug us:
AIM president Don Irvine read our post on AIM's award during the ceremony, calling us AIM's "favorite little lefty." (Gee, we didn't think telling the truth was such a "lefty" position.) Irvine responded to our pointing out how honoring inaccuracy is "antithesis of its name. That's how depraved and irrelevant AIM has become" by asserting, "I wear that with a badge of honor, and I think everybody else in here should as well." Irvine then asked if we werein the audience (we weren't), and it was then that Breitbart, off-camera, said, "If Terry's here, I'll give him a hug."
We remain wary of a hug from Breitbart -- we expect he wants to stab us in the back. But we now have confirmation that people at AIM read ConWebWatch.
Is that going to keep Cliff Kincaid from lyingabout the anti-gay Uganda law? Probably not. But he knows we're catching every lie, and that will catch up with him.
CMI Writer Pretends She Can Read Reporters' Minds Topic: Media Research Center
In a March 2 MRC Culture & Media Institute item, Sarah Knoploh imparts emotions to a reporter she can't possibly know.
Knoploh asserts that a USA Today reporter "lamented" a business slump in the "porn industry," assailing the reporter for writing about it "as though it was just another suffering business" and snarking, "The poor porn industry." How doesKnoploh knowthe reporter "lamented" the state of the porn industry? She doesn't -- she's merely invoking the Depiction-Equals-Approval Fallacy by essentially claiming that any reporter who reports on pornography must endorse it and may be an actual user of it. (That's not just a logical fallacy -- in this case, it may be libelous.)
Knoploh further clamed that "This is not, however, the first time the media has pitied the porn industry." Again, Knoploh offers no evidence of "pity," just another article reporting on the industry's slump.
Note to Sarah Knoploh: Reporters write all the time about things they don't personally approve of. Does every reporter who writes about a murder endorse it?
Kupelian Condemns Abusive Behavior (When It's Not Christian) Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily published an excerpt from WND managing editor David Kupelian's new book "How Evil Works" in which he explores "what causes an innocent child to morph into an instrument of great evil":
Let's understand, even a violent philosophy like that of radical Islam isn't necessarily sufficient, by itself, to create a rage-fueled jihadist. No, you become full of hate and driven to violate others only when someone else first violates you – when a parent, older sibling, teacher, cleric or other authority figure intimidates, frightens, degrades, bullies, humiliates or perhaps sexually abuses you. And such cruelty and degradation are, unfortunately, endemic in much of the Islamic world. Its rigid, authoritarian religious system, the near-slave status and abuse of women, the suffocating sexual repression, the widespread incidence of what can only be called the world's most flagrant child abuse (where even toddlers are groomed for future "martyrdom operations"), and the pervasive fear of flogging, amputation or stoning if one runs afoul of the ultra-strict Sharia legal code – all this creates an environment reeking of quiet terror. No wonder its victims take to terrorism so readily.
Yet WND once defended a man calling himself a Christian who behaved in a very similar way.
As we detailed, WND repeatedly lionized a man who, according to court records, "has a long history of physically abusing the children." More evidence of the man's authoritarianism from the court records:
He will not permit the children to attend school. He will not permit them to receive childhood vaccinations. He will not permit the girls to wear pants at home. He will not permit birth certificates. There is evidence that mother does not interfere with his discipline of the children and his rules. There is evidence she does not make even tentative decisions in dependency matters but rather defers issues until father can make decisions on them. Several of the children gave answers to the social worker, forensic evaluator, and the court that have all the appearance of reflecting what the children were told to say or believed father would want them to say or not say.
And yes, there was sexual abuse -- one of the children was allegedly abused by a family friend.
Why did WND praise such a vile man? Because he claimd to be a Christian and he homeschooled his (terrified) children -- never mind that the court found the "education" being provided to be horribly inadequate. Even after these revelations about this man were made public by ConWebWatch, WND continued to defend him -- because he homeschooled. The man claimed he homeschooled because, in WND reporter Bob Unruh's words, "he won't allow the pro-homosexual, pro-bisexual, pro-transgender agenda of California's public schools ... to indoctrinate his children."
(WND's defense of a man who refused to provide his children with birth certificates is highly ironic given WND's current obsession with Barack Obama's certificate.)
Is there any real difference between this man Kupelian's organization defended and the Islamic extremism Kupelian claims to deplore? We don't see it. If there is one, perhaps Kupelian can enlighten us.
UPDATE: Kupelian also purports to condemn the "toxic programming" of indoctrination, adding that "for such outrageous and counter-intuitive falsehoods to be both believed and acted upon, those being indoctrinated must be kept in a very emotional state." That's something Kupelian's website has regularly done by repeatedly likening President Obama to Nazis and even the Antichrist -- not to mention the incessant hate WND's columnists spew (prison rapist, anyone?).
Could it be that Kupelian is such an expert on the subject of dehumanizing indoctrination because his entire career is built on disseminating it?
Geller Still a Newsmax Columnist After All Topic: Newsmax
It seems we spoke too soon.
Last week, we wrote that it appeared Newsmax had dumped Pamela Geller as a columnist, presumably in response to her repeated hateful rhetoric. But Geller has since published a new column at Newsmax, this time on the Rifqa Bary case.
This means it's clear that Newsmax has no problem with Geller's anti-Muslim hate-fest at CPAC a couple weeks ago or, apparently, with very little of the hate she spews. The column in which she smears President Obama as "jihad-enabling" and "President L-dopa," which Newsmax had deleted, remains off the website, however (it's still in Google cache).
Newsmax needs to explain why -- after dumping a columnist who advocated a military coup against Obama -- it continues to provide space to a writer whose hateful rantings it has had to remove at least once before.
WND's Latest Pack of Anti-Obama Lies Topic: WorldNetDaily
The new issue of WND's Whistleblower magazine carries the theme of "STEALING THE NEXT ELECTION," in which President Obama is personally accused of aiming to maintain "permanent power."
IN other words, it's your usual pack of anti-Obama lies and scaremongering that we've sadly come to expect from WND. Here's the scary bullet points, followed by the truth unlikely to appear in the magazine:
Universal voter registration: Now being secretly prepared by at least two prominent members of Congress, this is essentially a scheme to legalize voter fraud by shifting responsibility for registering to vote from the citizen to the government, meaning people are automatically registered to vote, based on DMV records, income-tax returns, welfare rolls, unemployment lists and other government databases.
WND has already caught the leading proponent of the "universal voter registration" conspiracy, John Fund, in a lie on the subject -- he had falsely claimed that Barney Frank was involved in planning such a scheme. And WND has yet to present evidence beyond Fund's conspiracy-mongering that the bill purporptedly being "secretly prepared by at least two prominent members of Congress" would in fact contain universal voter registration.
Illegal immigrant registration: Since government databases contain names of non-citizens, not to mention mentally incompetent individuals and felons – factors that would ordinarily disqualify a person from voting in most states – universal registration would open the floodgates to fraud. And since many people own property in more than one location and pay taxes to numerous government entities, they would be afforded the opportunity to vote in multiple locations.
Again, since this is tied to universal voter registration -- the existence of which WND has yet to prove -- this is empty scaremongering.
Amnesty: Disguised once again by euphemisms like "comprehensive immigration reform," amnesty will create millions of new Democrat voters. As Obama adviser and SEIU executive vice president Eliseo Medina said recently regarding amnesty: "Can you imagine 8 million new voters who care about our issues and will be voting? We will be creating a governing coalition for the long term, not just for an election cycle."
Amnesty implies no preconditions before becoming a citizen. Recent efforts to reform immigration laws have focused on establishing a "path to citizenship" that would establish preconditions; Obama has previously endorsed the idea of "a system that allows undocumented immigrants who are in good standing to pay a fine, learn English, and go to the back of the line for the opportunity to become citizens." Thus, "comprehensive immigration reform" is not amnesty.
Convicted felons voting: The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals late last year cleared the way for inmates to vote from prison. The court overturned a Washington state law prohibiting felons from voting until they are released and off parole, arguing state restrictions unfairly penalized minorities since they have a higher incarceration rate. Polls show felons overwhelmingly prefer Democrats.
There's no evidence provided that Obama himself, let alone Democrats, are personally involved in this lawsuit, as WND implies. WND also misinterprets the ruling. The argument was not that "state restrictions unfairly penalized minorities since they have a higher incarceration rate"; it was that, in the words of one of the judges in the case, attorneys for the defendants "have demonstrated that police practices, searches, arrests, detention practices, and plea bargaining practices lead to a greater burden on minorities that cannot be explained in race-neutral ways."
Planting operatives in America's statehouses: A subversive, Soros-backed group called the Secretary of State Project is gearing up to steal the 2012 election for Obama and congressional Democrats by installing left-wing Democrats as secretaries of state across the nation, from which posts they can help tilt the electoral playing field.
It appears that Matthew Vadum is writing this article. As we've noted, Vadum was promoting this conspiracy during the Minnesota Senate recount, where the Minnesota secretary of state, Mark Ritchie, received campaign money from this "subversive, Soros-backed group." But Vadum has never proven that Ritchie did anything wrong during the recount process -- even the Minnesota Supreme Court stated that "[n]o claim of fraud in the election or during the recount was made by either" Al Franken or Norm Coleman. We somehow suspect that Vadum and WND won't bring up the impropriety of the secretary of state in Florida in 2000 also being a state chairperson of George W. Bush's presidential campaign at a time when it was embroiled in a recount battle. Then again, WND published Katherine Harris' book.
Mychal Massie On the Word 'Negro' Topic: WorldNetDaily
Presented without comment:
For census purposes, it is certainly appropriate to list Negro as a race. Question No. 9 on the form asks: "What is person 1's race?" The options include Black, African-American or Negro. Many people emigrating here from other countries prefer and are completely comfortable with being identified as Negro. Personally, I prefer to be recognized as an American sans color – something for which I am routinely criticized by liberal blacks.
I personally detest and reject the assignation African-American. I've said many times that Teresa Heinz-Kerry is more African-American than I am. At least she was born in the East African country of Mozambique.
Political correctness and malevolent agendas enhanced by ignorance are the primary causal factors that lead certain blacks to view Negro as being representative of Jim Crow. It is worth noting here that at the time blacks were referred to as Negroes, over 80 percent of the households were married, with two parents, 40 percent of those being business owners.
Today, when we have an insistence on an assignation that in factuality is remote at best, we have a pandemic of single-parent or no birth-parent homes. We have witnessed the genocide of over 25 percent of the American black race due to abortion.
It is irreconcilable to me that the addition of the assignation "Negro" is more grievous than the aforementioned. Even members of the Black Panther Party of the '60s and early '70s decried abortion as leading to the systematic extermination of blacks.
First, there was Hi-Caliber. Now, Molotov Mitchell drives another stake into the art of rap music with his new ditty, "OTP (One Term President)." Yes, ol' Molotov and his crew have torn themselves away from hating gays long enough to rap about how much they hate President Obama under the name Wolverines!:
Yes, that's Molotov's wife, D.J. Dolce, being auto-tuned beyond recognition. The whole enterprise feels like an attempt to create a right-wing, hard-core version of this song.
And then there's "Constitution Kate," who drops this hateful little rhyme:
Why you guys still up in Iraq, man? What's the holdup? I'm still ducking rounds in the sand, man I'm sick of smelling like a mosque after Ramadan While you're smelling like [unintelligible] and filet mignon
[...]
But then I look at you sittin' in the West Wing Won't do anything but polish up your Nobel Peace Prize You drop charges for terrorists -- whoa! You think you're Fergie in [unintelligle] -- whoa! You roam the world to apologize Bowing down to Saudis, investigating GIs But pretty soon you're gonna pay the piper But I don't mean a sniper My vote's got a Teflon coat
And someone unoriginally calling himself The MZA unleashes a birther rap:
Hard core birther here Let me make it clear for ya People say he isn't even president We ain't seen the B.C. He's [unintelligble] up all the evidence
And Molotov hismelf raps about losing a job at a bakery
Fool me once, it happens all the time Public education makes you dumb, man Thought I was voting for hope I was voting for a bum, man
[...]
B. Hussein, sucka, where's my job? Just words, just speeches, just weakless OTP, angry mob reppin' 2-0-1-2 Where karma's gonna get you
Needless to say, WorldNetDaily thinks this little ditty is the bee's knees, declaring the video to be "momentous" (or maybe Molotov himself wrote this -- after all, the entire WND article reads like a press release).
-- Noel Sheppard bashing the New York Times' Frank Rich for criticizing the tea party movement without really contradicting anything he wrote.
-- Tom Blumer purporting to claim that he "emphatically does not approve of" a prank call made to MSNBC by someone pretending to be Team USA hockey goalie Ryan Miller, then approving of it anyway because it "did the nation two small favors:"
First, he embarrassed a network that seems incapable of being embarrassed by much of what its hosts and guests say on a daily basis.
Second, he kept Chris Matthews off the air for a precious few minutes, as Geist interrupted "Hardball" to conduct a brief make-up interview with the real Ryan Miller.
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.
