Kovacs Still Whitewashing Birther Hero's Racist Ties Topic: WorldNetDaily
In a July 6 interview on Denver's KHOW radio, WorldNetDaily's Joe Kovacs continued to whitewash the apparent racist links of birther hero Tim Adams, following the host's lead in promoting the idea that Adams is "anything but a racist."
As he hasbefore, Kovacs does not address the core issue -- Kovacs first made his claims on the radio show of a self-described "pro-white" host while at a convention of the white-supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens.
Kovacs goes on to say of Adams, "He's not a birther, he's a Hillary Clinton supporter." But that means nothing, since the first birthers, like Philip Berg, were Hillary supporters as well.
Kovacs also insists that "everything he has said is so far true, " but that's not necessarily true. As we noted, Glen Takahashi, administrator of the Honolulu City Clerk's office where Adams worked, has contradicted Adams' claims about how much access he had to database records, as well as Adams' claim that Obama's lack of a birth certificate was an "open secret."Kovacs has never reported Takahashi's statement -- presumably because they do conflict with the birther narrative that is WND editorial policy.
Have you ever read a book so great, so important, so revealing of the deepest convictions you hold that you say to yourself, "Gee, I wish I wrote that!"
That's what happened to me not just upon turning the final page of "How Evil Works," but literally after every chapter!
"How Evil Works" by my longtime friend and colleague, David Kupelian, is the sequel to another work that had that effect on me – "The Marketing of Evil." While the first book, as the title implies, exposed how the very real existence of evil in our world is sold to us as good, this book probes even deeper, providing insights into the very nature of evil and how prevalent it is in our modern world.
This book is deep, but engaging – transformative, but eminently readable.
Joseph Farah – not only my long-time friend, colleague, WND founder and crusading journalistic veteran, but a risk-taking patriot who understands the true basis of lasting liberty and isn't afraid to talk about it – has come forth with an eloquent and powerfully reasoned argument for letting God back into our lives, into America and into the tea party.
Following in the tradition of Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" and other passionate revolutionary-era pamphleteers, in "The Tea Party Manifesto: A Vision for an American Rebirth," Farah appeals equally to the hearts and minds of his countrymen with an irresistible call simply to return to our roots as Americans.
Vice President Joe Biden has been accused of comparing Republicans with Nazis by using the word “blitzkrieg” in a fundraising e-mail.
In the e-mail sent via the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Biden warned that House Democrats “will be hit with a GOP blitzkrieg of vicious swift-boat-style attack ads.”
“Blitzkrieg” is a term that was used to describe Germany’s military offensives during World War II.
The Newsvine website, in an article headlined “Biden e-mail compares Republicans to Nazis,” said Biden “continued with his Nazi slur by referring to Democrats as the Allies who fought back the Nazi occupation of Europe.” Biden stated: “Our Democratic allies in the House need your help, and the president and I hope we can count on you to come to their defense.”
A spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner told the New York Daily News that “invoking the Nazis’ crimes against humanity in a political debate is simply inappropriate.”
The idea that Biden is likening Republicans to Nazis by using the word "blitzkrieg" is utterly ridiculous. Newsmax apparently got the inspiration for this smear from Matt Drudge, so that explains a little.
Newsmax also treats Newsvine as some sort of legitimate news organization. It's not -- it's a personalized news aggregator. What Newsmax is quoting from is a blogger named "Dr. Danny," whose blog is apparently hosted by Newsvine.
But if using the word "blitzkrieg" is equal to calling someone a Nazi, let's see Newsmax's record:
In a September 2002 column, Phil Brennan referred to then-California "Gov. Gray Davis’ advertising blitzkrieg" against opponent Bill Simon.
A December 2002 column by Tammy Bruce references "Sen. Tom Daschle's nutty blitzkrieg against Rush Limbaugh."
The attack book "Hillary's Scheme" by Newsmax's Carl Limbacher, references "the Clinton IRS blitzkrieg" against opponents.
In a August 2009 column, Arnaud de Borchgrave quotes the right-wing Human Events as promoting their daily newsletter as having the goal to "defeat the pro-abortionists' 'stealth' media campaign with its own media blitzkrieg designed to counter . . . lies and propaganda with the facts."
Unless Newsmax is willing to admit that all of these people were endeavoring to liken those they were attacking as Nazis, they should back away from smearing Biden in this manner.
It's not easy declaring that someone told the truth when you don't actually quote anything they said, but Mychal Massie has accomplished that feat in his July 6 WorldNetDaily column. It's headlined "Michael Steele told the truth," but nowhere does Massie directly quote Steele telling said truth. Instead, Massie writes around it:
This is Obama's war now, and he's doing a lousy job of instilling confidence in his leadership as commander in chief. Did officers and troops refuse to obey direct orders of President George W. Bush by refusing deployment?
Michael may not have spoken eloquently, but what he said doesn't rise to the level of his stepping down. This is "gotcha" politics – Republican-style. If it weren't, those criticizing him would be making the points I'm making.
But Steele came nowhere near to saying that Afghanistan "is Obama's war now." What he actually said was that Afghanistan is a "war of Obama's choosing" and that it is "not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in." Not the same thing.
Massie then went on to attack Obama's prosecution of the war:
First of all, there is no one more pro-military than I – no one. But unless Obama, the leftover Clinton Pentagon pansies and all of the pusillanimous Harvard/Yale theorists get out of the way – the war in Afghanistan will be reduced to a Vietnam. I'm more interested in killing all the enemy radical Muslims I can, more than I am in getting more homosexuals and lesbians into the Marine Corps. I'm pro-military, and I'm pro–crush and thoroughly demoralize the enemy at every opportunity.
[...]
And, let me repeat myself, this is Obama's war. He's the president – he owns it. And not until he and the politically correct get out of the way and let our great military do what they do better than any other military in the world will we have victory – because you can't win a war with one hand tied behind your back.
At no point does Massie offer any evidence that the military's prosecution of the war is being overly restrained in any way.
D.J. Dolce's Idea of 'Comedy': An Anti-Gay Rant Topic: WorldNetDaily
D.J. Dolce's July 6 edition of "News! News!" at WorldNetDaily is even more painfully unfunny than usual, because it begins with a long gay-bashing screed:
San Francisco recently celebrated its 40th annual gay parade. Seriously, homosexuals, you want us to believe that you're trustworthy, safe, upstanding pillars of the community, and you dress up like this? America, would you let this babysit your kids? Much less adopt a kid?
If you answered yes to either of these questions, you're GAAAAYYY! -- and walking proof that homosexuality is a mental disorder.
And if you suffer from this particular disorder, you're probably conflicted over a recent "SNL" skit that portrays homosexuals as the opposite of normal. Specifically, this skit juxtaposes Midwestern family values against New York gay bars with fetish. Not cool, "Saturday Night Live" -- making fun of people with mental disorders is not funny.
Where, exactly, is the "joke" here? Remember, this is supposed to be comedy. We couldn't find it -- all we saw was hate. Which is not surprising, since Dolce is married to noted homophobe Molotov Mitchell, who approves of a proposed law in Uganda that would permit capital punishment for merely being homosexual (Molotov's some-of-my-best-friends-are-gay defense notwithstanding).
Dolce also plays into WND's longtime anti-gay agenda, so it's the perfect place for her to spew her rage.
P.S. Dolce also calls President Obama an "illegal immigrant."
New Article: WorldNetDaily's Letter Scam (Or Is That Spam?) Topic: WorldNetDaily
WND wants readers to pay it increasingly hefty fees to send letters to politicians on various hot-button issues -- and to spread numerous lies in the process. Read more >>
WND Seems Mostly Happy Tabloid Stole Its Birther Story Topic: WorldNetDaily
Is WorldNetDaily happy to have descended to the level of a supermarket tabloid? It appears so.
A July 5 WND article by Joe Kovacs details how the charges leveled by new birther hero Tim Adams are "now featured in a cover story in Globe Magazine, repeating the allegations originally revealed by WND." Kovacs adds that "in every instance of a quotation from Adams, the tabloid appears to have simply copied Adams' comments to WND verbatim, without ever mentioning the remarks originated with a WND interview."
Of course, the Globe isn't exactly a "magazine"; it's a supermarket tabloid. The Globe promoted the birther story last August, which WND also touted. It seems fitting, since WND has roughly the same standards of accuracy as a supermarket tabloid.
But lifting stuff from WND without sufficient credit has long been a sore point. Does this mean that WND will start attacking the Globe like it did the New Republic, when it slimed writer John B. Judis as "Judas" for not crediting WND for a story? You'd think it would, and we can't wait to see it.
Kovacs also repeats the claim that Adams' "direct contradiction of the White House storyline that Obama was born in Hawaii has sparked detractors to attack him personally online and on the air in a vicious smear campaign." But as before, Kovacs doesn't address the basis for the so-called "smear campaign": Why did Adams make his claim to a "pro-white" radio show at a convention of the white-supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens?
WND: Outreach to Indonesia = Obama's A Secret Muslim Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has elevated a controversy in a comment thread to "news."
No, really. Here's how Bob Unruh puts it in a July 2 WND article:
The chief of NASA says Indonesia is being considered as a likely space-mission partner for the United States, since President Obama has ordered the agency to reach out specifically to nations dominated by Islam.
But the confirmation from NASA administrator Charlie Bolden to an audience of engineering students recently has stirred a furor in the Orlando Sentinel forum pages after his comments were reported there.
Yes, that's how Unruh framed it -- this story is news because there are a lot of comments on it in a comment thread.
This being WND, Unruh didn't stop there. He went on to portray this silly little non-controversy as evidence that Obama is a secret Muslim:
WND has reported before on Obama's ardent outreach to Muslims, which has come up periodically ever since he claimed to be a Muslim in a television interview where the interviewer corrected his "misstatement."
[...]
He also hired many Muslims for his administration, created the outreach to the worldwide Muslim community in the State Department, announced cuts in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, offered funding to a Muslim technology fund, issued a special hajj message, had a "nonreligious" Christmas and offered support for an anti-Israel resolution at the U.N.
Nowhere does Unruh explain why it's a bad thing to reach out to any qualified person on the subject of science and technology -- nor does he explain how all of this makes Obama a secret Muslim.
A July 4 NewsBusters post by Jeff Poor contains the headline, "Embattled Weigel Calls Sources of Criticism of His Ideology 'Partisan Anti-Media Groups.'" Poor curiously doesn't mention one reason why ex-Washington Post blogger Dave Weigel is feeling "embattled" -- his employer, the Media Research Center, is waging a battle against him.
Poor writes that Weigel's reference to "partisan anti-media groups who just want to score points against mainstream media organizations" may "possibly" be about the MRC because "Newsbusters and the Media Research Center have documented Weigel's missteps during his brief stint at the Post and even prior to the leaked Journolist e-mails," but he doesn't note that the MRChas done more than "document Weigel's missteps" -- as we noted, the MRC's Dan Gainor was secretly trying to get his fellow right-wingers to interfere with Weigel's job by not talking to him.
UPDATE: Poor has updated his post to note: "Last month, Media Research Center Vice President Dan Gainor told Politico's Keach Hagey he had contacted conservative groups and asked them to stop cooperating with Weigel."
Farah Upset Others Horning In On WND's Guilt-By-Association Racket Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily just hates it when someone horns in on their territory.
First, Joseph Farah complained that MSNBC programs were "agitprop" and a "bad joke" with "no concern for the truth" -- when we all know that agitprop that disregards the truth is WND's territory. Then, in apparent response to a rash of gay-bashing at the Media Research Center, WND cranked up its own homophobia.
Now, Farah again complains when others do something his own website does regularly. In his July 5 column, Farah complains once more about the Minneapolis Star Tribune highlighting Michele Bachmann's appearance in a Coral Ridge Ministries video and noting Coral Ridge's previous video fallaciously linking Darwin and Hitler:
[Reporter Jeremy] Herb and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune didn't directly attack Bachmann for criticizing socialism. They did an end-run. It seems Coral Ridge produced an excellent video a few years ago called "Darwin's Deadly Legacy" that accurately documented how the "Origin of the Species" author's work led directly to the worldview of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, making the Holocaust possible and possibly even inevitable.
But it seems the busybodies over at the Anti-Defamation League denounced the Darwin documentary – and, thus, it became "controversial" in the eyes of Herb and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Now, mind you, Bachmann wasn't involved in the Darwin video. But she was involved in the subsequent socialism video. And that, in the eyes of Herb and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, presumably makes her an anti-Semite – even though the Darwin video recounts the Holocaust as one of history's darkest moments.
Go figure.
That is the kind of extreme guilty-by-association game they play at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
Farah would know -- WND plays the guilt-by-association card all the time. That's pretty much all Aaron Klein does (well, that and citing anonymous, unverifiable sources). Heck, Klein even turned his guilt-by-assocation attacks into an anti-Obama book, in which he laughably claims he doesn't believe in guilt by association.
What would WND be if not for guilt-by-assocation?
Farah later states: "The only scandal is that a newspaper would continue to publish this kind of garbage and stay in business." Funny, we've often wondered that ourselves -- execept about WorldNetDaily.
Aaron Klein Anonymous Source Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
Here's the latest in anonymous, unaccountable sourcing from WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein, an anonymous source abuser:
A June 28 article cites "Israeli diplomatic sources," "a senior Palestinian Authority negotiator," and an "Egyptian security official."
A July 1 article, claiming that "Hamas has held meetings with U.S. officials," cites "a senior Hamas leader in Gaza."
A July 4 article cites "sources in Netanyahu's office."
In none of these articles does Klein explain why anonymity was granted to these sources, or whether he made any effort whatsoever to verify the information they allegedly gave him.
Klein also appeared on the July 5 edition of "Fox & Friends" to discuss claims by Hamas that they are negotiating with the U.S. WhileKlein did drop a couple of names, it was clear that there are no high-level communications going on -- Klein admitted that any talks are happening through intermediaries, not directly with the Obama administration.
Also, WND's name got botched during the interview. The Fox host called it "World News Daily," while on-screen text called it "World Daily News."
Mark Robare claimed in a July 1 NewsBusters post: "The big three nightly news broadcasts, NBC Nightly, CBS Evening and ABC World, lost a combined one million viewers in the second quarter of 2010, according to TVNewser."
Broadcast Evening Newscasts Lose More than 1 Million Viewers in Past Year
Even as the oil continues to gush from the sea floor, and the networks shuttle their anchors to points along the Gulf coast, NBC Nightly News, ABC World News and the CBS Evening News continue to lose viewers. All three broadcasts were down in Q2 2010 compared to the same period last year.
A quarter of a year is not a year, Mark.
Further, according to Eric Boehlert (who points out that the original headline, "ABCBSNBC Lose One Million Viewers Last Quarter," made the same falsehood), the more surprising statistic is that "Glenn Beck has lost more than one million viewers all by himself since January."
Fallacious Video Gets Another Boost Topic: WorldNetDaily
Last week, we detailed how WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah baselessly defended a Coral Ridge Ministries video endeavoring to link evolution to the Holocaust, attempting to defend the video's fallacious premise that evolution and social Darwinism are the same thing. Now WND has given the makers of the video a say.
A July 2 WND column by John Aman, director of communications at Coral Ridge Ministries, similarly defends the video -- and embraces the same fallacy:
Well, the facts are clear, as we show in our 2006 documentary, "Darwin's Deadly Legacy."
"Among German historians, there's really not much debate about whether or not Hitler was a social Darwinist," according to historian Richard Weikart, author of "From Darwin to Hitler" and a featured guest on our DVD. "He clearly was drawing on Darwinian ideas."
British evolutionist Sir Arthur Keith agreed. He wrote in the 1940s: "The German führer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist. He has consciously sought to make the practice of Germany conform to the theory of evolution."
Even leading evolutionist Niles Eldredge freely admits the link between Darwin and Hitler. Eldredge, a curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, has written that "social Darwinism," which he regards as an illegitimate offspring of Darwin's theory, "has given us the eugenics movement and some of its darker outgrowths, such as the genocidal practices of the Nazis in World War II – where eugenics was invoked as a scientific rationale to go along with whatever other 'reasons' Hitler and his fellow Nazis had for the Holocaust."
Much of that claim is taken word-for-word from a Coral Ridge press release issued after the Anti-Defamation League's Abe Foxman pointed out that "Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people."
Regarding Aman's (or whoever wrote it) claim about Eldredge, Ed Brayton pointed out its contradictory nature:
Are they too stupid to understand that if social darwinism was an illegitimate offspring of evolution, as it is both in reality and in Eldredge's view, then it cannot be an admission of a "link between Darwin and Hitler"? Or are they just lying, knowing that most of their followers are too stupid to recognize the obvious contradiction in this paragraph? And does it really matter whether the explanation is stupidity or dishonesty to exploit stupidity?
Regarding Aman's invoking of Weikart, Brayton writes:
Kennedy's response also tries to gain credibility by citing Richard Weikart, author of a book called From Darwin to Hitler and, not surprisingly, a Discovery Institute fellow. Other historians have almost universally rejected Weikart's thesis, including at a conference on Judaism and evolution attended by ScienceBlogger John Lynch last year, where every single historian in attendance other than Weikart rejected his simplistic argument.
Brayton also destroys Coral Ridge's presumption that the Holocaust could have only been inspired by Darwin:
In order to be a valid argument, there would have to have been no genocide in pre-Darwinian history, back when that alleged Christian ethic of the value of every human being held sway. But not only is that not the case, one can point to instances of genocide not only justified by Christian theology but explicitly ordered by their Biblical God (according to their scripture, of course; I don't believe it for a moment). And to go even further, there is a vast history of Christian pogroms against the very group that Hitler's genocidal zeal was aimed, Jews. And as I showed a few days ago, Hitler cited those anti-Jewish statements by Christian theologians over the centuries to justify the Final Solution.
We know that it was possible for people to target the Jews for oppression and even death based solely on Christian hatred of the Jews because it happened several times throughout the history of Europe. After the Roman Empire converted to Christianity in the 4th century, it instituted a long series of anti-Jewish laws similar to the Third Reich. The Justinian Code, based so heavily on Biblical laws, had an entire section on the rights of Jews, essentially forbidding them from having any. They were forbidden to build synagogues, forbidden to read their scriptures in Hebrew, and even forbidden to gather in public places. Their property was confiscated.
There were many church conferences that passed anti-Jewish laws. The Trulanic Synod in 692 even made it illegal for a Christian to go to a Jewish doctor. The Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 required Jews to wear distinctive clothing to distinguish themselves from Christians (sound familiar? Remember, this was centuries before Darwin was born). The Council of Basel forbid Jews from attending universities. All of this was perpetrated by Christians long before Darwin lived; so much for the notion that before Darwin undermined Christianity, everyone was valuable.
And do we even have to go into Martin Luther, a man whose vicious anti-Semitism virtually knew no boundaries? It's not an accident that Luther was Germany's most influential theologian and Lutheranism the official church of Germany at the time of Hitler's takeover. It was largely Luther's virulent anti-Jewish screeds that provided fertile ground for Hitler's assault on the Jews. It was Luther who encouraged his followers to set Jewish synagogues on fire and declared that "they ought to be put under one roof or in a stable, like gypsies, in order that they may realize that they are not masters in our land, as they boast, but miserable captives, as they complain of incessantly before God with bitter wailing." Sounds a lot like a concentration camp, doesn't it?
We've not seen where anyone from Coral Ridge has responded to Brayton.
Henry Lamb writes in his July 3 WorldNetDaily column:
The root cause of the near-collapse that occurred in the last year of the Bush administration can be traced to the Democratic socialist idea that everyone has a right to adequate housing.
Before President Carter, private lenders in a free market often refused to fund mortgages in certain parts of cities where the neighborhoods were so bad that lenders considered the investment to be unsafe. Democrats and socialists called this practice "redlining." Carter and his Democratic colleagues enacted the Community Reinvestment Act, which effectively outlawed redlining.
This was an enormous intrusion by the government into the marketplace, but it was not enough to satisfy Democrats and socialists.
As we explained when Michael Reagan expressed a similar nostalgia for the practice, redlining in practice was racist because those "bad" and "unsafe" areas were invariably minority-dominated, and people who lived there were turned down for loans because they lived in those areas, not because of their ability to pay back the loan.
We've previously highlighted the cult-of-personality aspect of NewsReal, run by the David Horowitz Freedom Center mainly, it appears, for the glory of David Horowitz.
Another thing on the subject is worth mentioning: The avatar for NewsReal's Twitter account is, yes, the increasingly Lenin-like visage of David Horowitz. Which results in things like this (copied from TweetDeck):
