Even WND Is Now Correcting Orly Taitz's Birther Lunacy -- But Jack Cashill Embraces It Topic: WorldNetDaily
Are the days when WorldNetDaily serve as an apologist and whitewasher for Orly Taitz over? It appears so.
An unbylined April 6 WND article highlights a claim by Taitz -- who it describes as an "eligibility gadfly," a far cry from when WND was fawning over her in a 2009 profile as a "fierce blond attorney" with "a vibrant smile and an ebullient personality" -- that Barack Obama "only attend[ed] Columbia University for nine months," only to follow up with a stinging response: "But according to information obtained by WND, it appears Obama did indeed attend Columbia for two years."
After proving Taitz wrong, WND descended into its usual birther blather. But WND throwing Taitz under the bus is an interesting development.
But as WND was correcting Taitz's bogus claim, conspiracy-monger extraordinaire Jack Cashill was embracing it in his April 7 column, citing "irrepressible researcher Orly Taitz" (though he does aver that "Taitz is likely unaware of competing evidence").
Cashill then takes it further:
In his definitive 2010 biography of Barack Obama, "The Bridge," New Yorker editor David Remnick features a photograph of a dapper young Barack Obama sitting between his grandparents on a Central Park bench.
The bench is real. The grandparents are real. The wall behind them is real. Barack Obama is not. He has been conspicuously photoshopped in. Who did this and why remains as much a mystery as Obama's extended stay in New York.
Actually, as Media Matters points out, Obama has in fact been Photoshopped out of the photo, and the the one Cashill is portraying as "real" is actually the fake -- as evidenced by Obama's right knee still appearing in it.
An April 7 Newsmax article by Hiram Reisner uncritically repeats Donald Trump's claim that Barack Obama's "grandmother in Kenya is on record saying he was born in Kenya." But Reisner fails to report that Trump's claim is false.
As we documented when WorldNetDaily tried to peddle this same claim, the charge originates with an Obama-hating Anabaptist minister named Ron McRae, who contacted Obama's grandmother, Sarah Obama, and tried to talk to her through translators. McRae has twisted misunderstandings due to translation problems into a definitive claim that Sarah Obama said Barack was born in Kenya.
Reisner also uncritically repeats another Trump claim: "The hospital has, not only no birth certificate — or if they have it they should produce it, maybe there is something on it, who knows — but they have no records that he was there. The family is fighting over which hospital in Hawaii he was born in. There is not one record, in any hospital in Hawaii, that Barack Hussein Obama was born there." Trump simply cannot know that; in fact, federal privacy laws forbid hospitals from releasing patient records.
Why is Reisner allowing such clearly false and misleading information to stand uncorrected? Perhaps because his boss seems to have partnered with Trump to promote his wannabe presidential campaign.
CNS Still Falsely Suggesting Federal Funding For Planned Parenthood Pays For Abortions Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com, it seems, is bound and determined to falsely portray federal money for Planned Parenthood as paying for abortions.
In an April 5 CNS article, Fred Lucas interprets President Obama's comment about "using last year’s budget process to have arguments about abortion, to have arguments about the Environmental Protection Agency, to try to use this budget negotiation as a vehicle for every ideological or political difference between the two parties" to actually mean that Obama "would not sign a budget agreement to keep the government running that cuts funding for Planned Parenthood and the Environmental Protection Agency." At no point does Lucas quote Obama actually saying that.
As misleading as that is, the headline on Lucas' article gets it even more so, claiming: "Abortion, Environmental Regulation are Priorities for Obama in Seeking Budget Compromise." But Lucas never quotes Obama saying that, either.
As we've previously noted, federal funding that goes to Planned Parenthood pays for health care and family planning services and does not pay for abortions outside of what is permitted by the federal Hyde Amendment, which restricts federal spending on abortions to cases of rape, incest or to preserve the life of the mother.
WND Still Whitewashing Adams -- And Ignores His Biggest Scoop Topic: WorldNetDaily
Remember Tim Adams, the former Hawaii elections clerk temp who had no real access to election records yet insisted that President Obama wasn't born in Hawaii? He's back!
An April 6 WorldNetDaily article by Joe Kovacs details Adams' latest claim: that "the president and his aides have been 'caught fibbing' about Obama's background, and the 'embarrassing' situation is making it difficult to fess up to the truth." As he has before, Kovacs is covering up for Adams.
Kovacs writes that Adams made his claim "in a two-hour interview with a group looking to disprove claims made by so-called birthers." But Kovacs fails to mention the most significant claim Adams made during that same interview -- that people connected with WND created the affidavit Adams signed in January (which WND made a big deal out of at the time).
RC: Well, you, you were certainly able to say what, what you wanted to say. Now, now you, you did mention, I believe, and we'll get to your, the affidavit that you filed. First, I think we're able to move on to that. You filed, you filed anaffidavit that appeared in WorldNetDaily. First of all, was, was this sworn under, under oath to any officer of the court? Under penalty of perjury?
MR. ADAMS: Yes.
RC: To what court?
MR. ADAMS: Uh, I'd have to look at a copy of the darned thing.
RC: Well, I've got it here. It's, it's signed by a notary public, but you know I could get my, any, any document I can get a notary public to sign. But, again, an affidavit is normally, uh, a court document -
MR. ADAMS: If you want to go over the affidavit, I can, can tell you about that.I had agreed -- I had been willing to do an affidavit last June, but, um, I'm poor, so, uh, this past year, uh, some of the folks with, at WorldNetDaily, or affiliated with WorldNetDaily, they paid for the lawyer to draw the thing up. They, uh, sent it up here and I had it, uh, notarized and signed, and swore out the statement and sent it back. There's no duplicity going on there, that's just the way it was done.
RC: So, you, did WorldNetDaily pay you for the affidavit?
MR. ADAMS: No, they just paid -- someone associated with WorldNetDaily, I forget who, it might have been Mr. Corsi, um, had their attorney draw it up. So they paid for the attorney services to draw the document up.
Foggy: And did the attorney talk to you before he drew itup?
MR. ADAMS: Yeah. They contacted me about two or three times on the phone before they sent it up here and told me what I had to do with it when it arrived. And then I faxed it down back to them.
RC: But they, they wrote it for you then?
MR. ADAMS: They wrote out the document based on my testimony. Yeah. Yep.
Besides, as we've previously detailed, Adams' affidavit is complete hearsay, repeating claims from unnamed "senior officers in the City and County of Honolulu Elections Division"; at no point does he relate any firsthand knowledge regarding Obama's birth certificate.
As he hasrepeatedlybefore, Kovacs ignores the charges of racism against Adams, starting with the fact that Adams first made his claim about Obama's birth certificate on the radio show of self-described "pro-White" host James Edwards, who was broadcasating from the 2010 National Conference of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a decendent of the openly racist White Citizens Councils of the 1950s and 1960s that the Anti-Defamation League describes as having a "white supremacy, white separatism" ideology.
But Adams has said more racially charged things that WND has never mentioned -- for instance, repeatedly referring to Hawaii as a "ghetto paradise" on his MySpace blog.
This and other statements -- such as calling the hateful Westboro Baptist Church a "blessing" and sarcastically describing Obama as a "chosen messiah" who "is gettin whipped like a Hebrew slave child by a white woman from Alaska" -- were covered during the radio interview Kovacs wrote about, but he mentions none of it in his article.
Not only is Kovacs still whitewashing Adams to keep up his birther-hero status, he's hiding the fact that WND is working behind the scenes to advance his claims.
Les Kinsolving Homophobic Freak-Out Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
Les Kinsolving begins his April 5 column this way:
One of the best veteran reporters and columnists in our nation's capital is Rowan Scarborough of the Washington Times.
That is probably why he was leaked a copy of our armed forces training material for 2.2 million active and reserve troops, as a prelude to opening the ranks to self-announced homosexual males and lesbian females.
Well, no. The more likely reason Scarborough was leaked the manual is that he's a right-wing hack, as we documented back in 2007 with his attempt to smear a CIA official who was an outsider to the particular management regime he favored (and was probably in bed with).
But you'll notice that the subject of the leaked manual involved "self-announced homosexual males and lesbian females." Cue another homophobic freak-out by Kinsolving!
Noting a statement from the man ual that ""Commanders may honor a request not to shower with known-gay service members," Kinsolving adds:
In a brief interview with Scarborough, I cited that and asked: "If they allow that refuge from the possibility of excessively peering homosexual eyes in the showers, what about the presence of peering by announced homosexuals in the latrines?"
Scarborough replied, "Nothing at all about that in that training material!"
Kinsolving went on to declare "grim news" the Supreme Court has ruled that "private consensual sexual activity to include consensual sodomy, regardless of sexual orientation, is a protected liberty under the 14th Amendment." Then he writes:
QUESTION: Do the U.S. Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces know of any sexual orientation with a higher rate of AIDS and syphilis than homosexuality, which has led to so many thousands of deaths? And if homosexuals in our armed forces are medically examined for AIDS and syphilis when they are accepted into the armed services, should they not be re-examined whenever they return from leave – given the possibility of an AIDS- or syphilis-infected civilian lover, together with this homosexual armed forces member's possible promiscuity in search for others in barracks or aboard ship?
This is the kind of thing that happens when a hack and a hater (who is also a hack) get together.
NewsBusters Thinks Dead Afghan Troops Are Obama's 'Problem' Topic: NewsBusters
In an April 5 NewsBusters post, Rusty Weiss takes offense at the idea that, as one news article reported, "many of America's problems predated [Obama's] presidency." Weiss reported with "a short list of American problems since Obama took office," among them being "858 U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan since Obama’s inauguration."
You gotta love a conservative declaring dead soldiers fighting for American freedom to be a "problem."
And what does Weiss link to as evidence for this claim? A certain CNSNews.com article. If you were wondering why CNS has been doing monthly body counts on Afghanistan when it felt no need to do so while soldiers were dying under a Republican president, you now have your answer.
(And who invaded Afghanistan in the first place, only to neglect it for a war elsewhere, causing the initial gains to be negated? Hint: Not Obama.)
Weiss also lists as an Obama "problem" the claim that he "Tripled the national deficit in his first year in office." Actually, the fiscal year 2009 budget deficit was mostly the consequence of Bush-era policies. Perhaps he shouldn't be citing as evidence Gateway Pundit's Jim Hoft, better known as the Dumbest Man on the Internet.
CNS Columnist Likens Planned Parenthood To Tuskegee Experiment Topic: CNSNews.com
The disturbing parallels that exist between a government cover-up decades ago and the lies propagated by Planned Parenthood today should serve as a wake-up call to those who may not yet know the frightening reality behind what Planned Parenthood practices.
Imagine reading this headline in your local newspaper: If the Tuskegee experiments were being run by Planned Parenthood today, Congress would increase its funding!
Would you be outraged? Presumably, you would be. Yet the sad fact is that this idea is not too far-fetched.
[...]
Today, Planned Parenthood uses the same sort of tactic on our young people that was employed at Tuskegee. Even though these people are not herded into a particular government facility to participate in testing, the results are similar. And Planned Parenthood’s tactic is far more devious.
Much like the Tuskegee research subjects, the young people who are unfortunate enough to visit a Planned Parenthood office do not receive adequate information about the birth control pill prior to ingesting it. They are not informed that the pill can kill a preborn child. They are not warned that the pill can harm them physically, emotionally or even—depending on their medical history—result in their death.
Our teens are human guinea pigs who are being deceived by an organization that receives more than a third of its funding from the federal government.
Newsmax Thrilled That Trump Promoted Its Meaningless Poll Topic: Newsmax
An April 4 Newsmax article gets very meta as it touts how Donald Trump -- whose possible presidential candidacy it has promoting for months -- said in an appearance on "Fox & Friends" that "A Newsmax poll said I’m winning."
That, of course, would be one of Newsmax's patented opt-in online polls that is relentlessly promoted online. This one seems to be specifically designed to boost Trump's viability as a candidate (not to mention massage Trump's ego) by making it mostly about him and whether he is "right in demanding that Pres. Obama release his birth certificate."
But the skewed, meaningless poll results have not been released publicly; the article states that Trump was referring to "early results" from the poll.B ut how could he know those results? The only possible explanation is that Newsmax told him.
As an opt-in poll, the results were already untrustworthy. But Newsmax is apparently so in the tank for Trump that it's sharing those untrustworthy poll numbers with him. Why trust anything Newsmax has to say about Trump?
Meanwhile, the fluffing of Trump at Newsmax is not unanimous. John LeBoutillier urges people to fight "the allure of the billionaire savior," adding, "Donald Trump is all about himself. Period. Will it become The Trump White House if he wins?"
WorldNetDaily To Become Just WND Topic: WorldNetDaily
An April 3 WorldNetDaily article announces that the website's name is about to change:
WorldNetDaily is changing its name, but Editor and Chief Executive Officer Joseph Farah wants everyone to know they can continue to expect the same fiercely independent commitment to the truth and watchdog journalism.
Of course, the idea that WND has a "commitment to the truth" is ludicrous, not to mention patentlyfalse.
The article also states that on top of a new logo, later this year WND will launch "its first major redesign since the site was founded in 1997," which even WND editor Joseph Farah concedes comes "about 10 years late." We can't argue with that.
UPDATE: Commenters (to me and on Facebook) wonder: The proclaimed reason for the name change may be "a marketing decision based on the ease of remembering a three-letter site amid the increasing noise and clutter of an Internet with hundreds of millions of competing sites," but is the real motivation an attempt to distance itself from nicknames like WingNutDaily and WorldNutDaily?
MRC's Hypocritial Outrage Over Jesse Ventura Topic: NewsBusters
In an April 4 NewsBusters post, Scott Whitlock is offended that ABC "offered 9/11 truther Jesse Ventura a platform to hype his conspiracy theories and smear the U.S. government as 'Nazi.'" Whitlock huffed, "why does ABC giving Ventura opportunities to promote such claims?"
Whitlock might have a little more credibility if one of his fellow NewsBusters bloggers wasn't actively helping Ventura to spread his conspiracies.
As we've detailed in the MRC's long list of double standards, NewsBusters associate editor -- and fellow MRC employee -- Noel Sheppard played a starring role in an episode of Ventura's TruTV show "Conspiracy Theory" focusing on global warming, spinning global warming as "power and money and control of the population" and slipping Ventura "a list of scientists that I want you to talk to. You will learn a lot from these folks."
Is George Stepanopoulos questioning Ventura on "GMA" really more embarrassing than Sheppard's thespian turn on Ventura's own show?
WND's Klein Smears Vartan Gregorian -- Again Topic: WorldNetDaily
Why does Aaron Klein hate Vartan Gregorian?
Last year, Klein plucked the Carnegie Corporation chief out of obscurity to smear him in a WorldNetDaily article as an Islamist extremist who is "closely tied to the Muslim leaders behind a proposed controversial Islamic cultural center to be built near the site of the 9/11 attacks." Klein didn't mention that by the same standard he was using to smear Gregorian -- being on the board of the 9/11 Memorial and Museum -- Rudy Guiliani, Michael Bloomberg, 9/11 widow Debra Burlingame, and all four living former presidents are also "closely tied" to the " ‘Ground Zero' imam." Klein central concept that Gregorian is some kind of Islamist extremist is laughable given his resume, which also including being president of Brown University and president of the New York Public Library, not exactly hotbeds of extremism (though Klein might belive differently) and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom from none other than President Bush.
That smear wasn't enough for Klein; he followed up with an article portraying President Obama appointment of Gregorian to Commission on White House Fellowships as payback for his alleged role in choosing Obama to head the Chicago Annenberg Challenge in the 1990s. Klein apparently believes that nothing screams "payoff" more than an appointment to a minor government board.
Klein went at it again in a March 31 WND article, this time drawing a even more specious guilt-by-assocation attack: Gregorian served on an advisory board in 2001 that developed the "Responsibility to Protect" policy invoked by Obama to launch military action against Libya. No, really, that's all Klein has.
Having exhausted that line of reasoning rather quickly, Klein spends the rest of his article rehashing old smears, such as his claim that "WND previously reported documentation shows Gregorian was central in the recruitment of Obama in 1995 to serve as the first chairman of an education project, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge." In fact, as we documented, Klein's "documentation" is specious -- just a single letter asking CAC founder Bill Ayers to "compose the governing board" of the Challenge's collaborative project with "people who reflect the racial and ethnic diversity of Chicago."
Klein then claimed that "Ayers and other founding Challenge members then recruited Obama to serve as the project chairman." But more credible sources have reported that Ayers had nothing to do with the recruitment of Obama.
Klein's repeated attacks on Gregorian appear to be more than coincidence -- they seem personal. What did Gregorian do to Klein that is apparently motivating this campaign of guilt-by-association revenge?
With the new month comes yet another body count report from from CNSNews.com's Edwin Mora. This time, he makes a big deal out of, as the headline states, "60% of U.S. Military Deaths in Afghanistan Have Occurred Since Obama Was Inaugurated in 2009."
As we've come to expect, the word "Iraq" appears nowhere in Mora's article; thus, Mora fails to put the Afghan casualties into perspective by ignoring the fact that the U.S. casualty rate in Iraq at the height of the Iraq war was much higher.
NEW ARTICLE: WorldNetDaily's Favorite African Dictator Topic: WorldNetDaily
Why is WND backing Ivory Coast's Laurent Gbagbo, who lost an election but won't leave office even as his followers commit human rights violations? Because he claims to be a Christian, and because his opponent is a Muslim. That's it. Read more >>
AIM's Kincaid Still Thinks He's A Journalist Topic: Accuracy in Media
An April 3 Politco article on the inferiority of Republican opposition research quotes Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid denouncing the idea that he's in the opposition research business:
Noting with displeasure that some of the staffers and leaders of Media Matters and CAP have “Democratic affiliations – they just come from the Democratic Party openly,” he said “that bothers me because I am a journalist. I never worked for a political campaign. I make it a policy in what I write at AIM to be critical of, not just the left-leaning media outlets, but also the right.”
False. Kincaid has never worked for a news organization, and AIM -- where Kincaid has spent most, if not all, of his adult career -- is certainly no journalistic enterprise. It has a partisan point of view, and so does Kincaid. As we pointed out the last time Kincaid suggested this, his track record is one of partisan activism, not journalism.
So When DOES The MRC Like Christianity Being Crititized? Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center is trying to become enforcers on when the media is permitted to write anything less than flattering about Christianity.
A March 29 MRC Culture & Media Institute article by Matt Philbin complained that Showtime's new miniseries "The Borgias" -- in which family patriarch Rodrigo became pope -- was airing during Lent, complaining that Showtime was "getting into the spirit of Lent and gleefully calling to mind some of the Catholic Church's centuries-old sins," adding that the series is "a thumb in the eye to the Church during holy season."
Philbin doesn't really question the historical accuracy of the content; he concedes that Rodrigo Borgia "bought the papacy, becoming Pope Alexander VI in 1492, and misused his office in a variety of distinctly unholy ways." Instead, he grouses only about the timing of the series (but does not offer an alternative time that the show could air and not draw his criticism) and highlights Bill Donohue's attack on the series, failing to disclose that his boss, Brent Bozell, is on the board of advisors of Donohue's organization, the Catholic League.
In the same spirit, an April 3 NewsBusters post by Tim Graham bashing the Washington Post for running a feature article on the creators of a new Broadway musical about Mormons (emphasis in original):
The Washington Post obviously doesn't observe the idea that Sunday is the Lord's Day. It's apparently the Atheist's Day. The entire top half of the front page of the April 3 Sunday Arts section is an enormous picture of "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Just below the fold is a huge headline: "No, nothing is sacred." Another huge picture of Parker and Stone is inside, dominating most of E-7. The text around these publicity shots [Jennifer Altman for The Washington Post] is another promotional piece by Post theatre critic Peter Marks. Saying their new play "The Book of Mormon" actually "deserves worship" wasn't enough. A second helping of goo is required.
[...]
Marks and other South Park shoe-shiners don't seem to understand that Parker and Stone toe a hard line. Just because they giggle a lot and make butt jokes doesn't mean they aren't taking a very firm stand on the near-mental illness of religious people. They also fail to note that this pair is picking on people who don't fight back. If they wanted to make fun of a buffoonish religious figure, where is "Al Sharpton: The Musical"? It wouldn't happen because Sharpton would sue, and someone's building might get burned down.
Graham offers no evidence that he would be any less incensed about his article had it run on any other day of the week. He also offers no evidence that he has actually seen the musicial, which hasn't stop him for attacking it before.
Graham also slips in a bit of his omnipresent gay-bashing: "Don't miss that this show has a serious political meaning for the gay lobby. As MTV.com reported last year, "It's a project the duo first announced back in 2008, after the passage of the gay-marriage-banning Proposition 8 in California (for which the Mormon Church campaigned heavily)."
Here's an idea: Why doesn't the MRC issue a calendar detailing excactly which days -- if any exist -- the media is permitted who publish or air things that are less than flattering to Christianity?
An April 3 WorldNetDaily 
