The overly long headline pretty much says it all on the Dec. 17 CNSNews.com article by Dan Joseph: "Sen. Durbin Ducks Question of Whether He Accepts Judgment of Marine Commandant That Lifting the Ban on Homosexuals in Military Will Cost Marines' Lives."
The question regards repeal of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, and CNS is referring to comments by Marine Commandant Gen. James Amos that “Mistakes and inattention or distractions cost Marines lives. That’s the currency of this fight. I don’t want to lose any Marines to the distraction. I don’t want to have any Marines that I’m visiting at Bethesda [National Naval Medical Center] with no legs be the result of any type of distraction."
Plus, as Salon.com's Alex Pareene points out, Amos is likely speaking more from his views as an evangelical Christian than his military experience in opposing gays in the military, plus the idea that Marines will lose legs as a result of DADT repeal is nonsensical: "That's what he thinks is going to happen, right? A Marine will just be so inattentive that he'll forget to keep his legs attached to himself? Because that interpretation is actually less insulting to the Marines than thinking that gay people will make them less effective in actual combat situations."
Susan Jones devoted a Dec. 16 CNSNews.com article to opining by Pinal County, Ariz., Sheriff Paul Babeu over the shooting death of a Border Patrol agent in Arizona and his complaining that federal officials are ignoring him. But Jones ignores that Babeu has faced criticism over his actions regarding one of his deputies who claims he was shot by drug smugglers.
As TPM documented, many questions have been raised about what happened to the deputy, Louie Puroll. While the case helped launched Babeu into national prominence, he has made questionable and exaggerated claims about the case, only some of which have been walked back.
Babeu had previously cleared Puroll after an internal investigation, but after Puroll allegedly threatened a reporter who has been looking into the shooting incident, Babeu suspended him earlier this month.
No original CNS article addresses the controversy surrounding the Puroll shooting. CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey wrote a column in May portraying the Puroll shooting as an example of how "President Obama and Congress are failing in their most fundamental duties." (He spells Babeu's name wrong in the process, but this was before Babeu became a favored CNS source). An Oct. 15 article by Penny Starr reference the shooting but not the controversy that had been raging over it. CNS did publish an Associated Press article on the reopening of the case in October, but it has yet to acknowledge the most recent twists in the case regarding Puroll's suspension.
Michael Reagan to America's Women: Get Back In the Kitchen! Topic: Newsmax
In modern America, the feminists would take mom out of the kitchen and put her in the drive-thru lane at the local fast-food chain (ironically, that's verboten also). They have eulogized the nation's first lady for assuming the role of a food czar who instructs us on what chow is good for us and our children, who should cook it, and what foods should be kept off the national menu.
Mothers are looked at with withering stares should they teach their daughters how to cook, and fathers get the same treatment if they concern themselves with their daughters' future role as wives and mothers.
If mothers would once again start teaching their daughters the time-honored role of family chef, and fathers would make sure that their wives are honored and cherished for making the kitchen one of their principal domains, we'd be a lot better off.
Instead we have a first lady who sees her role as first mother not only to instruct us on what victuals we should eat, but warns us that the menu at the local fast-food emporium is the diet from hell.
She goes so far as to dig up patches of the White House lawn, formerly the site of the so-called Easter egg hunts, and plant the seeds of what she tells us are the staples of a healthy diet — a diet regimen in the White House kitchens one doubts includes whatever puny edibles grown on the lawn of the Executive Mansion.
If she and her fellow radical feminists would devote more time to praising and defending the produce that farmers and retailers bring us, and less time playing the role as diet dictators, meals would be family celebrations instead of burdensome chores for the moms who cook them.
[...]
A happy home is one in which moms teach their daughters how to cook tasty meals for their future families and dads teach their sons that one of their roles in family life is drying the dishes and otherwise doing chores around the house to lighten mom's burdens.
Finally, women should understand and act on the time-honored truth that the fastest route to a man's heart is through his stomach, and not always through the drive-in window at the nearest fast-food restaurant. That's one way we can begin to put the family — and America — back together.
Joseph Farah cranks up the homophobia -- and calls for mass desertions from the military -- in his Dec. 17 WorldNetDaily column about the impending repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell:
So what's next if the U.S. military opens up its ranks to flaming homosexuals, transsexuals, transvestites, lesbians and other sexual deviants du jour?
According to the Pentagon's survey on the impact of the move, 265,000 military service people would leave earlier than planned as a result of just this move. That represents 12.6 percent of all personnel, and, I think, that's low-balling it.
Military analyst Bob Maginnis, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and senior fellow for national security at the Family Research Council, said the real number could exceed half a million.
"Twelve-point-six percent is just the people who said they would leave," Maginnis told WND. "If you add in the number who said they 'might' leave, you get 23.7 percent. That would be 528,000, when you count both active duty and reserves."
As much as I respect and admire the U.S. military as an institution, I would find myself actively encouraging men and women to leave – in droves.
If the U.S. military is going to be transformed into just another tool of twisted social engineering, rather than a force designed to defend America's national security interests, dedicated, brave and upstanding young men and women should no longer participate of their own free will. It's just that simple. Let the politicians cobble together a military of social deviants if they think they can.
After all, this is simply a plan being orchestrated by a regime that loathes the military and seeks to destroy it. Maybe it's time for America to recognize what that will mean to the future of the country.
WND columnist Alan Keyes also contributes to the gay-bashing, howling that DADT repeal is part of "the Obama faction's determined effort to destroy the American way of life." He manages to work in birtherism as well:
It is no wonder that on the same day the Obama faction Democrats in the House passed the legislation meant to inaugurate this new military culture, an unjust court-martial rendered its verdict against an honorable officer whose only crime was seeking reassurance that the Constitution of the United States has been respected in the disposition of the office of commander in chief. This is the harbinger of the sorry truth. If the Obama faction and its GOP fellow travelers like Scott Brown (and, by the way, Ron Paul who voted with the Obama faction in the House) impose their will, soon there will be no place in the military for those who treat their oath to defend the Constitution as a matter of conscience. The honorable tradition of true citizen service will altogether yield to the mercenary and ambitious mentality of those who seek above all to gratify their own pleasure and ambition.
With the election of Barack Obama, we saw the advent of the political leadership suited finally to destroy the American constitutional republic. Once the culture of law-imposed homosexuality takes hold of the military, Americans will live in the shadow of the military force that corresponds to it. God help us.
MRC Tries, Fails to Conflate Non-Equivalent Remarks Topic: Media Research Center
A report that an unidentified Democratic member of Congress saying "f--- the president" has the Media Research Center all a-titter and determined to make false comparisons that even they admit are stretching things.
A Dec. 10 NewsBusters post by MRC researcher Scott Whitlock complained that "morning shows all ignored the report" while "many journalists professed outrage when Congressman Joe Wilson yelled 'You lie' at President Obama in 2009." Of course, the difference is that the Democrat made his remark during a closed-door meeting in which President Obama was not present and, by Whitlock's own admission, "mutter[ed]" it, while Wilson yelled his insult directly at the president during the middle of the State of the Union address.
Whitlock does concede the point, sort of: "Obviously there's a difference between an unidentified representative and a nationally televised embarrassing moment, but what if this mystery representative had been a Republican?"
Clay Waters tries to make the same baseless conflation in a Dec. 14 MRC TimesWatch item, complaining that New York Times reporter Carl Hulse wrote only that "Vulgar words were aimed at President Obama" while Hulse "dropped his previous concern for political decorum regarding attacks by congressmen on President Obama. He took offense when Republican Rep. Joe Miller shouted 'You lie!' during the State of the Union on September 9, 2009, after Obama had made a dubious claim about the status of health coverage for illegals under his health care proposal."
Like Whitlock, Waters concedes the comparison is mostly baseless:
One could argue that the “You lie!” and “F** the President” incidents aren’t perfectly parallel -- a live presidential address to Congress compared with an unrecorded vulgarity in a less formal setting. Yet a similar exchange between then Vice President Dick Cheney and Democratic Sen. Pat Leahy received wide coverage in the Times and elsewhere.
Waters doesn't mention that the "less formal setting" Cheney chose to insult Leahy was the floor of the Senate.
MRC chief Brent Bozell tried to peddle the false conflation on the Dec. 16 edition of Fox News' Hannity, "All of those networks who went after Joe Wilson for saying simply, 'You lie,' not one of them has reported it, Sean." Neither Bozell nor Sean Hannity noted the difference between a private meeting at which the target was not present and the middle of a nationally televised State of the Union Address -- or that Bozell's own employees ultimately dismissed the idea of a direct comparison.
WND Falsely Smears Canadian Lawmakers Topic: WorldNetDaily
The headline of a Dec. 16 WorldNetDaily article by Michael Carl reads, "Lawmakers OK with forced abortions" [italics theirs]. That, of course, is a complete lie.
Carl's article is about the failure of a bill in the Canadian House of Commons that would "make it illegal to coerce, threaten, or physically force a woman to have an abortion." Carl quotes no politician who said that they agreed with "forced abortions." Indeed, he quotes no Canadian politicians at all aside from the one who introduced the bill.
The headline embraces a logical fallacy: that a lawmaker who does not vote in favor of making something illegal endorses that behavior.
Carl, in a rare WND display of fairly telling both sides of the story, does report the truth behind the vote: He quotes an abortion-rights activist who points out that "the bill isn't necessary as threats and coercion are already illegal under our criminal code. So this bill simply was duplicating something. ... One of the biggest problems with the bill, of course, is that it was focusing on abortion only, when we know that women are also coerced into child birth."
Even more shockingly, Carl quotes no one shooting down this argument -- suggesting that, typical anti-abortion bluster aside, WND agrees that a bill that would make something illegal that was already illegal is redundant.
A Dec. 14 NewsBusters post by Tim Slagle carries the sinister headline, "FCC vs. Bristol Palin: More Proof Free Speech is the Enemy of the Left." Why, you'd think that a federal agency had declared jihad against ann innocent teenager, right?
Well, not so much. Amid all of Slagle's baseless attacks on censorious liberals, the only substance he serves up of any evil government plot is a Smoking Gun article noting that people had written to the FCC to complain about Palin's presence on "Dancing With the Stars," and the FCC ... did nothing.
That's it. That's all Slagle has. And even then he hides the full story.
Slagle presents all those who wrote to the FCC regarding Palin as "Leftists" who want the agency "to handle their dirty work against Bristol Palin." But the Smoking Gun notes that people complained that Palin was "encouraging and promoting teen pregnancy"-- which sounds more like a complaint from Slagle's side of the aisle.
Slagle also demonstrates a stunning lack of self-awareness about who he's writing for. He states that "For all the talk about the Right Wing being full of fascists, you never really hear the Right trying to censor the Left," even though his blog post was published by a right-wing organization that just did exactly that.
And who is has been responsible for the vast majority of FCC complaints in recent years? None other than the Parents Television Council, founded by -- you guessed it -- Brent Bozell, publisher of NewsBusters. The PTC has a long list of the FCC complaints it has filed, which arguably dwarf any Palin-related activity from "Leftists."
Such an ill-informed and misleading piece makes one wonder if NewsBusters has any real standards about who they let blog there.
WND's Warped View of DADT: 'Expert Military Advice' vs. Lady Gaga Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Dec. 15 WorldNetDaily article by Bob Unruh begins this way:
During World War II it was Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, El Alamein and Okinawa. Then came Korea's Pusan, Inchon and Chosin. In Vietnam it was the Tet Offensive and Battle of Saigon. Thousands of battles followed in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Now members of Congress have the choice of following the expert military advice offered by the U.S. veterans who gave their life's blood, sweat and tears on those far-flung battlefields – or Lady Gaga.
The issue is attempts to repeal the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" operating policy for the U.S. military that allows homosexuals to serve if they do not choose to make their sexual lifestyle choices a public issue. Activists want the military to allow members to serve while openly living homosexual lifestyles.
Indeed, Unruh -- true to his biased legacy -- presents only "the expert advice of Lady Gaga, a pop star" as support for repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
Unruh, of course, is lying to you. In fact, the "expert military advice" in favor of DADT repeal includes more than 100 retired generals and admirals , Defense SecretaryRobert Gates, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mike Mullen, and former Vice President Dick Cheney. But Unruh apparently believes that they would lend too much credibility to the pro-repeal argument, so he chose to invoke Lady Gaga instead.
Unruh also uncritically repeats a comment by anti-repeal activist Elaine Donnelly that the repeal effort is ""in blatant disregard of the message that voters sent in November." In fact, pollafterpoll shows Americans overwhelmingly favor repeal.
Newsmax Ignores GOP Hypocrisy on Earmarks Topic: Newsmax
In a Dec. 15 Newsmax article, David Patten features criticism by Republicans of "a massive spending bill laden with about 6,000 earmarks," quoting Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as saying that the bill "repeats all the mistakes voters demanded that we put an end to on Election Day ... bigger government, 2,000-page bills jammed through on Christmas Eve, wasteful spending."
But Patten didn't mention McConnell's hypocrisy: as The Hill reported, the bill includes $109 million in earmarks requested by McConnell.
CNS Rewrites AP Headline to Bash College Students Topic: CNSNews.com
Newsmax hasahistoryofediting the headlines of wire-service articles to reflect its right-wing bias. Now CNSNews.com has decided it wants in on some of that biased action.
A Dec. 15 Associated Press article on Tufts University providing therapy dogs to stressed-out students during final exams, was released with the headline "Tufts Uses Dogs To Ease Student Exam Stress." But that's not the headline CNS put on its copy of the article; it went with "Coddled Students Getting Quirky ‘Therapy’ to Ease Stress of Final Exams."
The article itself makes no mention of criticism of the therapy dogs, and nowhere does it attack students as "coddled." CNS has simply chosen to add bias to an article it didn't write by changing the headline to reflect its apparent view that students seeking to relieve stress during finals are worthless and weak.
Oh, and liberal too. Check out the comments left on the article by CNS readers:
The weakness exhibited by these students is appalling. I went to college and law school at night while working full time (to pay for it) and with a family to support. What will these poor little children do the first time the rent is due?
And just who is going to coddle these students when they get out into the workplace and find even more stress when faced with multiple responsibilities between the job and family?
Pressure? Liberal educational institutions do not like to address the pressures of life. They are more interested in promoting thier socialistic agenda. The students will be no more suited to realistic workloads and multitasking than they will be to run for president. Oh wait, never mind.
NewsBusters' Petty Apologizing for Fox News Topic: NewsBusters
Apparently, the Media Research Center has forbidden all direct references to Media Matters (disclosure: our employer). Indeed, we know of at least NewsBusters criticism of Media Matters that was deleted shortly after posting, presumably because it directly referenced the MRC's most prominent media-watchdog competition.
The MRC also has a mission of defending Fox News wherever and whenever. When these two directives collide, wackiness (or at least awkward writing) ensues.
When Media Matters released a leaked memo last week highlighting how Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon directed Fox News personnel, during the debate over health care reform, to use the Republican-preferred terminology of "government option" to describe what was more commonly referred to as the public option, NewsBusters' Lachlan Markay was eager to serve as a Fox News apologist -- albeit without acknowledging where the story originated.
Markay's Dec. 9 post on the issue makes no mention of Media Matters and doesn't even link to the original Media Matters item. Instead, he huffs that the story is merely "the latest meme among the legions of lefty Fox-haters" and links to the first page of Memeorandum's politics section. Ooh, that'll totally show Media Matters!
After digressing into other ideological debates over terminology, Markay finally gets around to taking Fox News' side, asserting that "while Fox's replacement of the 'public option' label with 'government option' made the proposal sound less appealing, it also presented the issue more accurately and in far less vague (arguably propagandistic) terminology." Of course, Markay doesn't concede that "government option"is "arguably propagandistic" too -- indeed, Republican pollster Frank Luntz appeared on Fox News to advise Republicans to use "government option" because "if you call it a 'public option,' the American people are split," but that "if you call it the 'government option,' the public is overwhelmingly against it." Conservative host Sean Hannity enthusiastically agreed, saying, "it's a great point, and from now on, I'm going to call it the government option."
That's in the original Media Matters article. If Markay had bothered to link to it instead of playing hide-and-seek through Memeorandum, he would know that.
When Media Matters released another memo from Sammon telling Fox Newsers to "refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question," Markay pulled the same stunt -- blindly defended Fox News and studiously avoiding any mention of the source of the memo.
In his Dec. 15 NewsBusters post, Markay rants again about "far-left Fox News haters" and links again to Memeorandum -- the exact same page he linked to before. Markay appears not to understand that the content on Memeorandum pages changes constantly. Markay went on to note that Politico "reported on the leak" but didn't mention who leaked it.
Markay asserted: "So Sammon instructed staff to incorporate the most basic tenets of science and journalism - skepticism and political neutrality, respectively - into their reporting on contentious scientific issues with tremendous political implications. And this is a problem?"
Well, yes -- and, again, if Markay had put in the effort to link to the original Media Matters story, he would know that. The point is that Sammon issued his directive less than 15 minutes after Fox correspondent Wendell Goler accurately reported on-air that the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization announced that 2000-2009 was "on track to be the warmest [decade] on record." That was a demonstrable fact, and the arguments of skeptics served simply to provide an opinion in response to a fact.
So, Markay's defenses of Fox News are both disingenuous and petty. Apparently, that's how you get to be an MRC blogger.
New Article: Rejecting Journalism -- And Science Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily sides with a "Christian nutrition ministry" that thinks it doesn't have to prove the questionable claims it makes about its products. Read more >>
Farah Presents An Unreal Doug McKelway Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah uses his Dec. 14 WorldNetDaily column to defend Doug McKelway, the former local news reporter fired after a biased news report and recently hired by Fox News. Farah's headline for his column is "Meet the real Doug McKelway," but Farah's version of him diverges from reality:
I've been in the news business for more than 30 years. I have quite literally done just about everything one can do in this business – from reporting to running daily newspapers to launching the very first independent online news organization in the world. I have to tell you, this is a straight news report. The only thing unusual about it is that the reporter accurately labels some far-left environmental groups for what they are and then points out the fact that Barack Obama accepted more oil money for his campaign than any other politician in America.
In fact, McKelway made a specific claim -- that "the one man who has more campaign contributions from BP than anybody else in history is now sitting in the Oval Office -- President Barack Obama -- who accepted $77,051 in campaign contributions from BP" -- that was factually inaccurate. As we've previously noted, Obama received only $1,000 from BP's PAC in 2004, less than what 21 other Senate candidates received from the BP PAC that year. The figure McKelway used in his report was the amount of money Obama received from employees of the company, not the company itself.
Because McKelway's factual error makes Obama look bad -- just like WND'sfactualerrorsdo -- Farah has found a kinship:
Fox isn't just hiring controversial newsmen to boost ratings. After all, how many people ever heard of McKelway before Fox hired him?
What Fox is doing is more akin to what I have been doing at WND for the past 14 years – picking up the courageous, fallen news warriors off the media battlefield and restoring them to a place of honor, a place where they can practice their craft, a place where they can do their job.
And lie about the president. Farah surely meant to say that, but he didn't.
MRC's Double Standard on Entertainers' Political Opinions Topic: Media Research Center
Matt Philbin, managing editor at the Media Research Center's Culture & Media Institute, tweets: "Doesn't matter that Kelsey Grammer is on our side, he's an actor and his political opinion means nothing."
Well, Philbin might want to impart that message regarding the political views of entertainers to his MRC colleagues at NewsBusters, which just published the latest column by Charlie Daniels.
WND's Kinsolving Whines About Missing WH Party Invite Topic: WorldNetDaily
Les Kinsolving has quite the sense of entitlement, it seems. Why else would he devote his Dec. 14 WorldNetDaily column to complaining that he wasn't invited to the White House Christmas party?
I also learned when I went to the White House press room before this surprise press conference that on that night the president and Mrs. Obama were hosting annual Christmas receptions for the media – from which I have been barred for the second year by the Obamaites.
My primary regret about this exclusion is the fact that my wife, Sylvia, known as "the Berkley Democrat," has very much enjoyed attending these events. I am sad, indeed, that the exclusion of me also applies to her – when so many other presidents of both parties never did this – except Jimmy Carter around Christmastime after he lost to Ronald Reagan.
I am sorry that the spirit of "Peace on Earth, good will toward men" has – by either the president or one of his minions – been denied to the two of us.
Kinsolving, naturally, has a theory about this:
I continue proud and grateful to be White House correspondent and columnist for WorldNetDaily, which continues to raise the still-unanswered questions engendered by the (alleged) Obama birth certificate.
This document has neither the name of the purported hospital in Hawaii, nor the attending physician. Could WND's justified curiosity and unrelenting determination to uncover the details of the president's birth have anything to do with the snubbing of the news site's White House correspondent?
Or is it because nobody takes Kinsolving seriously as a reporter since he's all about irrelevant gotcha questions like the birther stuff?
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:10 AM EST
Updated: Wednesday, December 15, 2010 10:54 AM EST
