WND Launches Unsubstantiated Attack On Charter School Funder Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Feb. 27 WorldNetDaily article by Michael Carl is one long attack on Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish billionaire who lives a reclusive life in exile in the United States. Carl asserts that Gulen is helping to fund "a large network of jihad-preaching schools" across "the American landscape"; the headline of Carl's article states, "Islamic indoctrination on U.S. taxpayers' tab."
But there's one thing missing from Carl's article: any actual evidence there is any "jihad-preaching" or "Islamic indoctrination" going on in any U.S. charter school connected to Gulen. Carl serves up no examples of that happening.
In fact, evidence not tied to WND's fantasies appears to back that up: An August 2010 USA Today article notes that while there have been issues at some Gulen-linked schools regarding preferences for hiring faculty of Turkish descent and other issues in individual schools, "there's no evidence the schools teach Islam."
Carl's main source for his attacks on Gulen is Paul Williams, who we last saw suing WND and its previous book-publishing partner over a retraction it issued for a claim in a WND-published book by Williams that resulted in a lawsuit against Williams by a Canadian university. So perhaps he's not the most credible source Carl could have chosen.
Indeed, Carl quotes Williams as claiming that Gulen has "created a network of Islamic charter schools in Turkey," suggesting that maybe "jihad-preaching" is going on there. But Wikipedia notes that Gulen schools in Turkey were among the first schools there to insist that female students not wear headscarves. And the New York Times reported that Gulen-linked schools in Pakistan have a heavy emphasis on a Western curriculum and a moderate approach toward Islam that offers an alternative to Islamic extremists.
With such a reliance on Williams -- a source with an apparent anti-Muslim ax to grind -- and opposing views all but ignored, Carl has servedup the severe bias that is apparently a requirement to be a WorldNetDaily reporter.
CNS Misleads Again on Planned Parenthood, Abortion Topic: CNSNews.com
As it is wont to do, CNSNews.com misled about Planned Parenthood, falsely implying yet again that federal money given to Planned Parenthood pays for abortions.
Edwin Mora writes in a Feb. 28 CNS article: "In its most recent annual report, Planned Parenthood said it took in $349.6 million in government funds in fiscal 2008. That same year, the organization says, it performed 324,008 abortions."
In fact, as we've previously noted, the federal Hyde Amendment prohibits federal funding for abortion except in cases of rape, incest or to preserve the life of the mother. The federal funding given to Planned Parenthood goes toward reproductive health services. Mora made no mention of this fact.
WND's Kupelian, Boone Whitewash The Past Topic: WorldNetDaily
In a Feb. 17 WorldNetDaily column, WND managing editor David Kupelian spins a whitewashed version of mid-century America that was ruined by British music and long hair and ultimately destroyed by Barack Obama:
I grew up in suburban Washington, D.C., during the 1950s. It was an innocent time. Kennedy hadn't been assassinated, there wasn't much divorce, and everyone loved Christmas. I didn't know what abortion or homosexuality were, and I had never even heard of people taking illegal drugs except in far-off ghettos. My school taught the three "Rs" and didn't teach about condoms. After school I got a snack and watched "Leave It to Beaver" and "Father Knows Best."
America was prosperous, strong and unified, and its culture was unapologetically Judeo-Christian. Despite all its flaws, America was simply the greatest nation on earth.
And the rest of the world knew it. People flocked here from all over, including my father who, as a little boy, barely escaped along with his mother from the Armenian Genocide. His father was murdered by the Turks, and his baby sister succumbed as well. In all, I lost dozens of family members, perhaps as many as 100, in the jihadist genocide of one and a half million Christian Armenians – the predecessor to the Nazi Holocaust 30 years later. For people like my father and grandmother, America was what the Promised Land was to the ancient Hebrews. They were inexpressibly grateful to be welcomed here. Though they came with nothing, they somehow thrived, got an education, became successful and prosperous and had families – all because of the generosity of America and the freedom and opportunity this country gave them.
This is the America that was imprinted on me – and on you, if you're old enough. This is the America you love.
However, ever since the 1960s we've lived in a blur. Although we remember the long hair, the "British invasion" and the obsession with psychedelic drugs, the really important, consequential things were happening on America's college campuses. Unbeknownst to almost everyone at the time, our nation was being assaulted by radical revolutionary movements: women's liberation, black liberation, sexual liberation, gay liberation, animal liberation, multiculturalism, political correctness and so on. But it was like a blur – we didn't really know what we were looking at, where it was coming from, and where it was taking us.
For decades, we blurred along like this. Even though our knowledge and technology were growing and transforming our world, giving us the illusion of constant progress, something was wrong. Crazy things kept happening. There were scandalous Supreme Court decisions no one could understand – banning prayer and Bible reading, but legalizing the killing of beautiful little babies. There was also a rapid upsurge in cults, atheists, New Agers and witches, not to mention hordes of angry homosexuals demanding special rights and denouncing anyone who disagreed with them.
Alongside all this developed an ever-increasing contempt – even demonization – toward Christianity, the religion that formed the basis for America and Western Civilization. It seemed that as a people we were in a pitched battle with ourselves – literally at war with our own core founding values.
But again, all this was a blur. It was hard to pin down what was happening, where it was all coming from and where it was heading.
Then finally, in late 2008, something broke the spell: We elected Barack Hussein Obama as president.
This same whitewashed version of history pops up in Pat Boone's Feb. 26 WND column:
Is it just me? Am I dreaming something that never was? Or do you remember the same things I do?
Wasn't there a "once upon a time" when families all consisted of a mom, a dad and a kid or two? When most people went to a worship service every Saturday or Sunday, and many even enjoyed a midweek prayer meeting as well?
Do you remember a time when families – Mom and Dad and all the kids – actually went to the neighborhood theater on Friday night, bought some 25-cent popcorn and all watched the same movie, together?
I really seem to recollect watching TV, on one of the three networks, with my brother and sisters and parents, all laughing at the same things and enjoying the same dramas, and feeling closer to my family for the experience. There were no other options even thought of, alternative channels that continually featured things I didn't want anybody else to know I was watching.
When you were growing up, was abortion or homosexuality or even sex outside of marriage ever discussed, or much even considered? Weren't such activities just considered "wrong," taboo, not to be discussed in polite company, and never, never to be condoned?
Weren't most elected officials and representatives, from the president on down, respected and looked up to, even if your folks hadn't voted for them? Didn't it seem that almost all of them were trying to do the right thing, and didn't it seem that America would always come out on top? And even if Daddy had to work very hard; and Mama, too, seemed to work nonstop from early morning till after your bedtime – didn't it seem there was always enough, with maybe a little to spare for a neighbor who needed help?
Who's getting richer under the Obama regime? Find out in "Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses"
Listen, as far back as most of us can remember, the house – the home – was the best investment a family could make. Combined with whatever savings and stock purchases a man could put together, his Social Security and the equity in his home would surely provide for his retirement. Real estate values always rose, right?
Didn't "liberty" and "freedom" seem real, tangible and just natural in this country? And even when the nation was at war, didn't it seem inevitable that we and our way of life would win out?
Am I crazy, or wasn't there the general, widespread and shared feeling that we were blessed by God and that He was pleased with us and our efforts to live life as He ordained it? Not that any of us was perfect, but that we expected the best behavior from ourselves and each other? That there are proven and accepted moral standards to live by?
If this wasn't all a dream, if you remember most of this like I do, what happened? How do we find ourselves in this nightmare of contemporary America? And how has it changed so radically, so fast?
As I reach back into this horrible nightmare, I seem to hear a loud, almost fanatic threat echoing in the night … "We are just five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America!"
Did Boone crib from Kupelian's column, or are they both in thrall to a past that didn't really exist except in their imaginations? Where minorities didn't exist or were conveniently out of sight -- and gays simply didn't exist at all? And funny how it all culminates with the election of a black president.
What are Kupelian and Boone really saying here? We report, you decide.
Vox Day Details 'The New White Man's Burden' Topic: WorldNetDaily
Last year, WorldNetDaily columnist Vox Day declared that Americans needed to "reclaim their traditional white Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture." Now, he is once again standing up for white culture by throwing his support for that historically maligned figure, the white male.
The decline of America can be traced to three fundamental factors: debt, demographics and democracy. Of those three factors, it is demographics that is the most vital. Since the 1965 Immigration Act, the American political elite has been electing a new people by encouraging immigration from a wide variety of societies that are vastly different in ethnic and cultural terms than American society. In combination with this vast invasion of the, shall we say, unconventionally civilized, the traditional male-female dynamic that had proven successful for centuries was altered through a transformation of the legal and judicial systems. This confluence of factors has created a tremendous challenge for the white male population, as young white American men now have every material incentive to opt out of activities which tend to foster societal survival and very little incentive to opt in.
This challenge does not exist because Roissy and the other apostles of Game are incorrect about the deck being grotesquely stacked against the delta (or, if you prefer, beta) males upon whom the continued survival of civilization ultimately rests. It exists precisely because they are correct. They are absolutely right. No society that has been reorganized and restructured to provide such a perverse system of incentives deserves to survive, indeed, no such civilized society ever has survived. And therein lies the awesome challenge present to the men of the West, to the young men of America, today.
The education system is stacked against them. The media are stacked against them. The law is stacked against them. The family courts are stacked against them. The church will cheerfully lecture them on their failures while uniformly giving women a pass on everything from abortion and gluttony to a failure to honor and submit to their husbands. Society has provided every possible excuse for a young, white Christian man to give up, opt out and become the videogame-addicted, marriage-avoidant, slut-shagging degenerate that the entertainment industry portrays him to be.
[...]
There is no reason for despair. The collapse of American empire is precisely what will bring about the end of the current system in which the unproductive prosper on the efforts of the productive, and it is certain because it is mathematically unsustainable. The old White Man's Burden was to bring Christian civilization to the savage. The new White Man's Burden is to plant seeds of Christian civilization that are capable of surviving the coming descent into savagery.
CNS Gives Platform to Anti-Gay Hate Group Topic: CNSNews.com
A Feb. 24 CNSNews.com article by Pete Winn gave voice to the head of an anti-gay hate group to attack executive orders in Massachusetts banning discrimination against transgendered people.
Winn gives copious space in his article to Brian Camenker, head of the group MassResistance -- which Winn identifies only as among "conservatives" who oppose the designation -- to denounce the executive orders as a stunt "to promote this transgender rights and hate crimes bill that the homosexual lobby has concocted again this year to try to pass statewide," adding: "We’re talking gender identity disorder, we’re talking something that the mental health profession terms as a disorder, basically men who mutilate themselves and ingest hormone altering drugs and women who do similar things."
As we've detailed, MassResistance is a virulently anti-gay group particularly popular at WorldNetDaily, which has used the group to fuel anti-gay sentiment there. MassResistance has no problem spreading falsehoods and making misleading claims to advance its homophobic agenda. The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated MassResistance as a hate group.
Such a designation and even an explanation of MassResistance's anti-gay agenda would be of interest to CNS' readers, but Winn apparently disagrees.
Newsmax, Gingrich Wrangle Over Interview Suggesting Obama Impeachment Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax got a bit of a blockbuster in a Feb. 25 article: an interview with Newt Gingrich in which he forwards the idea that President Obama could be impeached over his administration's decision to no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act. Gingrich said in the interview:
He swore an oath on the Bible to become president that he would uphold the Constitution and enforce the laws of the United States. He's not a one-person Supreme Court. The idea that we now have the rule of Obama instead of the rule of law should frighten everybody.
Imagine that Governor [Sarah] Palin had become president. Imagine that she had announced that Roe versus Wade in her judgment was unconstitutional and therefore the United States government would no longer protect anyone's right to have an abortion because she personally had decided it should be changed. The news media would have gone crazy. The New York Times would have demanded her impeachment.
The fact that the left likes the policy is allowing them to ignore the fact that this is a very unconstitutional act.
When interviewer Ashley Martella asked Gingrich when he would "recommend the House consider articles of impeachment for that," Gingrich responded: "I think first you'd ought -- you have to communicate. Look, I don't think these guys set out to cause a constitutional crisis. I think they set out to pay off their allies in the gay community and to do something that they thought was clever. I think that they didn't understand the implication that having a president personally suspend a law is clearly unconstitutional. This is an impossible precedent."
Gingrich's remarks prompted something of a walkback from Gingrich's people -- which began by going to Politico to complain that Newsmax “inaccurately” suggested impeachment.
Newsmax declined to back down, issuing astatement that "Newsmax stands by its story, which is based solely on the verbatim comments made by the Speaker during the video interview." But Politico also noted that Newsmax "conceded that, at the request of Gingrich's spokesman, it tweaked the published story to clarify his comments."
Indeed, the article now includes this parenthetical note as the new third paragraph: "A Gingrich spokesman stressed after the interview that we are not currently in a constitutional crisis, nor was Gingrich calling for the direct impeachment of the president. His statements were meant to illustrate the hypocrisy of the left and the mainstream media."
Meanwhile, over at U.S. News & World Report, Gingrich spokesman went further in defending the man who employs him: "Gingrich never raised impeachment nor did he say we were in a constitutional crisis. ... His remarks, as can be seen in the video, were to illustrate the hypocrisy of the media and the left. He explicitly says that Obama did not intend to spark a constitutional crisis but that the president is acting outside of his constitutional role, but that does not mean that there is a constitutional crisis."
Ellis Washington Derangement Syndrome Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
Trillions spent on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, thousands of soldiers dying for nothing, genocide against Christians in those countries – and President Obama and the media ignore their deaths. Why wasn't this foreseeable by all of our Harvard, Yale and Princeton-educated experts, think tanks and intellectuals? Because they foolishly think that democracy to the Muslim mind is the same as democracy to the pseudo-Christian mind. Both are tragically flawed, and both always end in anarchy.
[...]
Imagine Muslim caliphates in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Libya; communism and state socialism in South America, China, Russia, Europe; Marxist unionism exploding in Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, California, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey. While circumstances are different, the ends are inevitably the same: Absent a republic under Natural Law and the Bible, democracy = mobocracy = genocide.
Attack on Wisconsin Teachers Spreads Inside MRC Topic: Media Research Center
Other Media Research Center divisions are picking up on CNSNews.com's dishonest reporting falsely smearing Wisconsin teachers: A Feb. 23 MRC Business & Media Institute article by Julia Seymour asserts:
CNSNews.com reported on Feb. 22 that two-thirds of Wisconsin's eight [sic] graders (in public schools) cannot read proficiently. Only 32 percent of those eight graders earned a "proficient" grade on the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests. Forty-four percent earned a "basic" rating, while 22 percent received a "below basic" rating.
Seymour did not note that Wisconsin's proficiency levels on both reading and math are above the national average, a fact CNS buried in its articles in favor of smearing teachers as incompetent.
WorldNetDaily is not exactly known for its insightful coverage of racial issues, and that was never more obvious than in a Feb. 16 article by Joe Kovacs.
In it, Kovacs feigns offense that an NPR article would refer to Washington, D.C., as "Chocolate City," declaring it to be "similar terminology" to how "New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin came under fire for publicly saying he wanted to rebuild his city as a 'Chocolate New Orleans.'"
Contrary to Kovacs' suggestion, the description of Washington as "Chocolate City" was an expression of pride. As a Washington Post columnist wrote in 1998, "Chocolate City was a metaphorical utopia where black folks' majority status was translated into an assertion of self-consciousness, self-determination and self-confidence," going on to quote a black radio DJ who said, "Chocolate City for me was the expression of D.C.'s classy funk and confident blackness." The '70s funk band Parliament even named an album "Chocolate City," complete with images of Washington on the cover.
Kovacs goes on to cite a couple of bloggers complaining about the NPR story -- but about the story's treatment of demographic shifts in Washington, not the "Chocolate City" reference.
Perhaps Kovacs should school himself a bit on such things -- i.e., do a simple Google search -- before he writes about them.
This comes off as a particularly lame attempt to pile on NPR in an effort to support conservative efforts to cut off funding for it, even more so than WND's freakout over NPR doing a story on the existence of gay valentine's cards.
Newsmax Tries To Skew Its Own Meaningless Poll Topic: Newsmax
A few days ago, Newsmax sent out an email exhorting readers to take part in its meaningless "urgent national online poll about Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's fight with his state's public employees unions." (A screenshot of the email is below.)
As you might expect, the poll is filled with skewed questions like, "Do you believe public employee unions have become too powerful?" and "Do you believe public employee union members should be paid less, the same or more than employees with similar jobs in the private sector?" Of course, as an Associated Press article published by Newsmax points out, public sector workers make less than private sector workers in comparable jobs.
But skewed questions were enough for Newsmax -- they attempted to skew things more with a note at the end of the email: "The major media claims that Scott Walker is trying to destroy the unions. This is a lie."
In fact, under Walker's plan, unions would be barred from negotiating over anything other than wages, which would not be permitted to grow past the rate of inflation. That -- in addition to making union dues voluntary and requiring a certification vote for the union once a year -- is in effect a destruction of public-sector unions in Wisconsin, whether or not Newsmax wants to admit it.
In his latest WorldNetDaily video, Molotov Mitchell somehow manages to blame President Obama for Christina Aguilera botching the words to the Star-Spangled Banner because Obama is trying to build "Obamaland" a "culture of effete snobs." He also falsely claims that the national anthem is about "Francis Scott Key’s bloody vision of America’s War for Independence"; In fact, the anthem was composed during the War of 1812.
Sheppard Doesn't Understand The Meaning of Collective Bargaining Topic: NewsBusters
Noel Sheppard used a Feb. 22 NewsBusters post to go on an anti-union rant in response to a Washington Post column by Eugene Robinson. After noting Robinson's statement that the contracts Wisconsin public union workers are currently working under "were negotiated, which means that state and local officials agreed to the contract provisions now deemed so excessive," Sheppard howled in response:
Indeed. They were negotiated with collective bargaining, which when it comes to public employee contracts means the union put a gun to the government's head denying much-needed services to the citizenry thereby making what Don Corleone and Luca Brasi would call an offer you can't refuse.
Wisconsin is in financial trouble specifically due to such one-sided negotiations in the past, and the only way to permanently solve the state's long-term budget woes is to prevent this from happening in the future.
Accepting labor's concessions now without preventing subsequent collective bargaining on benefits would be like putting a band-aid on a severed artery: you might temporarily eradicate the symptom while totally ignoring the sure to be fatal cause.
Despite his ranting, Sheppard shows no evidence of actually knowing the circumstances under which the current union contracts were negotiated, which makes his claim that "the union put a gun to the government's head denying much-needed services to the citizenry" in a Mafia-esque fashion dubious at best.
Sheppard is also apparently ignorant of the fact that Wisconsin state employees have not had a raise in two years and were forced to take furlough days last year, when the governor was a Democrat.
It seems that state workers are more than willing to work with state officials to help Wisconsin fix its financial situation. Too bad Sheppard is so blinded by his hatred of unions to see that.
WND's Farah Childishly Insists He Won't Call Obama President Topic: WorldNetDaily
We've previously noted how WorldNetDaily columnist Robert Ringer rather pettily refuses to acknowledge that Barack Obama is the president. He's not the only one at WND engaging in such childish behavior -- and it's an attitude that comes straight from the top.
In his Feb. 27 column, WND editor Joseph Farah sneering references "this president, if you want to call him that – which I refuse to do."
This raises an interesting question about Farah's birther obsession. Is it all just a manifestation of a psychological block over his childish refusal to accept the fact that Obama was elected president?
Most people would seek psychiatric help for such a disorder. Farah, meanwhile, runs a media outlet in which he can spew his petulant rage with impunity.
WND's Klein Desperately Tries to Link Obama to Gadhafi Topic: WorldNetDaily
As Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi attempted to violently put down the rebellion in his country, WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein was straining to tie President Obama to Gadhafi.
Klein went his usual guilt-by-association route by touting Obama's "mystery links to Gadhafi" -- though anyone familiar with Klein's dishonest reporting techniques knew there was no mystery about what he was trying to do. All that Klein could come up with was claiming that Obama was being "cautious in his criticism of the dictator" because his former "spiritual adviser," Rev. Jeremiah Wright, went to Libya 25 years ago.
Since that obviously wasn't enough to fill out an article, Klein also threw in Gadhafi's ties to Louis Farrakhan, to whom Klein claimed Obama "has ties to" but served up nothing more substantive beyond their pictures appearing together on a magazine cover. Klein asserts no direct link whatsoever.
Further, in attacking Obama for allegedly not taking a "tougher stand" on Gadhafi, Klein ignored reports that more direct attacks on Gadhafi by the administration could have put in danger the lives of thousands of Americans trapped in Libya, including the possibility of their being taken hostage.
Klein, it seems, cares more about scoring partisan political points than about the safety of his fellow Americans.
Newsmax Channels Drudge in Obama Smear Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax apparently believes that Moammar Gadhafi is a credible spokesman after all.
Two days after Newsmax published an article headlined "Crazed Gadhafi Babbles as Libya Burns," Dan Weil apparently decided that Gadhafi was perfectly sane by authoritatively quoting his opinion on Obama in a Feb. 24 Newsmax article headlined Flashback: Gadhafi Bragged — Obama Is My Friend."
In Weil's sleazy smear, he asserts that Gadhafi "has been happy with Obama," citing statements in a year old interview at the conservative Israeli news website Ynet.
Weil did not think of this on his own, of course; as Michael Scherer points out, Matt Drudge did the exact same thing, citing the exact same article. Unlike Weil, Scherer details the history behind Gadhafi's remarks, noting that they appear to be "a public relations ploy, an attempt by the self-described 'king of kings' to associate himself with the popular American president. According to secret State Department cables, it did not describe a friendship that actually existed."
Such is the state of "reporting" at Newsmax -- Weil can't even come up with his own original Obama smears, and certainly can't be bothered to put them in their accurate historical context.
