Oops! Chuck Norris Declares Islamic Extremists Are 'Well-Pleased' With Obama Topic: WorldNetDaily
Chuck Norris picked the wrong day to rant that President Obama is a Muslim sympathizer.
In his May 2 WorldNetDaily column, the plagiarism-prone columnist asserted that "There is no greater proponent of the partnership of America and Islam (and therefore Shariah) than President Obama himself. I'm not saying he is a Muslim but a Muslim advocate and apologist." He added, "I'm certain that many Islamic extremists are well-pleased with the progress they are making in America."
Why doesn't Norris ask Osama bin Laden about how pleased he is? Oh, wait, he can't.
Ellis Washington Again Lies About Supposed School Failures Topic: WorldNetDaily
Ellis Washington writes in his April 30 WorldNetDaily column that "Obama's secretary of education, Arne Duncan, recently said that up to 80 percent of all public schools will fail within a year."
As we detailed the last time Washington asserted this, the supporting link hesupplies doesn't claim that; rather, it states that Education Secretary Arne Duncan said that the number of schools that will be classified as "failing" under the No Child Left Behind law will rocket from 37 to 82 per cent in 2011, which indicates a problem with NCLB.
The rest of Washington's column is his usual disjointed anti-communist ranting, in which he states that "Since about 1937 when FDR's 'New Deal' programs were ruled constitutional, America has gradually devolved into a socialist nation which if Obama gets re-elected in 2012 will push our nation totally into communism."
Newsmax's Hirsen Sneers At Actors As Immigration Advisers Topic: Newsmax
James Hirsen writes in an April 29 Newsmax article:
President Obama is turning to Hollywood for the best possible advice on all things immigration. And he's contacting all the pros: Eva Longoria, America Ferrera, and Rosario Dawson. Obama's slipping grip on the key Hispanic voting community may be a reason why.
The White House had previously announced that Obama would meet with “influential Hispanics from across the country to discuss the importance of fixing the broken immigration system.” The discussion was intended to focus on creating “a constructive national conversation on this important issue” and ultimately “work to build a bipartisan consensus in Congress.”
The brain trust that met with Obama and his aides in the White House Roosevelt Room included the following renowned immigration “experts”: Longoria of ABC’s “Desperate Housewives” fame, “Ugly Betty” show star Ferrera, “Sin City” movie actress Dawson and Emilio Estefan, the producer-musician husband of singer Gloria Estefan.
But as Media Matters notes, Longoria, Ferrera and Dawson have all been involved in immigration issues, from acting roles to actual activism; Dawson is the co-founder of the Hispanic activist group Voto Latino.
Nevertheless, Hirsen sneered that "To his credit Obama has met with officials who are close to the issue," including "politicians, religious clerics, law enforcement officials and business, labor, and civil rights figures." Hirsen added that Obama's "continued relationship with Hollywood celebrities" is "critical to the president’s securing of a second term."
WorldNetDaily has the occasional issue of stealing the work of others without credit -- when CEO Joseph Farah does it, it's bound to trickle down. Let's take a look at some WND-related plagiarism scandals that are bubbling up.
Last week, Wonkette discovered that Chuck Norris -- whose column was launched by WND and is now in syndication -- copied parts of his April 25 column word-for-word from other sources without giving them credit. Wonkette later learned that Norris plagiarizes on a surprisingly regular basis.
Now, Wonkette has deduced that Norris doesn't even actually write his columns, plagiarized or otherwise; his pastor, Todd DuBord, does. If that name sounds familiar, it's because WND has promoted his claims that religion (specificallly, Christianity) is being whitewashed out of historical sites like the Supreme Court and Jamestown, and not-so-historical sites like the Capitol visitor's center. WND has also touted how DuBord has tallied the supposed "ongoing trend" of President Obama not directly quoting references to God in the Declaration of Independence.
Interestingly, that's not the only allegation of plagiarism that's floating around WND. The Barackryphal blog has documented how Brad O'Leary, in his factually challenged, WND-published Obama attack book "The Audacity of Deceit," lifted several paragraphs of a WND article by Aaron Klein almost word-for-word without attribution.
There's even some plagiarism going on the birther front. Barackryphal catches some irregularities in the affidavit of Kweli Shuhubia, a translator enlisted by Obama-hating Anabaptist minister Ron McRae in his notorious phone call to Obama's grandmother in Kenya. WND's Jerome Corsi has touted the affidavits by McRae and Shuhubia as evidence that the grandmother said Obama was born in Kenya. Not only is Shuhubia a psuedonym and his affidavit un-notarized, part of it appears to be cribbed from McRae's own affidavit.
With the release of Obama's long-form birth certificate, McRae and "Shuhubia" are completely discredited. With such close association to documented plagiarizers, WND is too.
CNS Uses Royal Wedding To Attack Gay Marriage Topic: CNSNews.com
For the second time this week, CNSNews.com has done a bizarre bit of co-opting the news to push its right-wing agenda.
An April 29 CNS article by Penny Starr on the royal wedding focuses how the bishop addressed the couple and wedding guests by stating that "marriage is intended to be a way in which man and woman help each other to become what God meant each one to be, their deepest and truest selves." Starr then referenced "a 9-page statement on the church’s position on marriage that includes a reference to the union as between a man and a woman" and a 2008 invesigation into "the 'marriage' of two homosexual priests in one of London’s oldest churches."
We've previously noted how CNS used the release of President Obama's long-form birth certificate to push its anti-abortion agenda.
Is Newsmax Trying To Push Huckabee Out Of Presidential Race? Topic: Newsmax
As its Trump-fluffing has demonstrated, Newsmax seems to be playing favorites in who it wants to run for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. Apparently not a Newsmax favorite: Mike Huckabee.
An April 28 article by Jim Meyers touted a Rasmussen poll finding that "Donald Trump leads all other potential 2012 Republican presidential candidates" and Huckabee came in third This was accompanied later in the day by another article by Meyers highlighting "assertions by political experts that Huckabee won’t run" and featuring an interview with pollster Scott Rasmussen, who conducted the above-referenced poll, saying, "My expectation is that there is going to emerge somebody who we’re not even talking about who will be a serious contender, and that person could very well benefit from Mike Huckabee dropping out."
The article's headline: "Rasmussen: Huckabee Dropping Out Will Help Dark Horse Emerge." While Meyers began his article by stating that "Mike Huckabee’s camp has sought to refute a new report that the former Arkansas governor won’t seek the 2012 Republican presidential nomination," that didn't make into the headline.
We don't know what happened behind the scenes between Newsmax and Huckabee, but we can't imagine that Huckabee was happy with Newsmax's presentation of the supposed state of his presidential ambitions. We do know, however, that the next day, Meyers penned a Newsmax article carrying the headline "Huckabee Strongly Denies Reports He's Decided Not to Run," based on "an exclusive email to Newsmax and pollster Scott Rasmussen" from Huckabee and citing Meyers' earlier story.
This story comes off a lot like damage control after Huckabee caught them being a little too biased to a fellow Republican. Oops.
WND's Klein Has Another Tweet-Induced Hissy Fit Topic: WorldNetDaily
If WorldNetDaily is thin-skinned by building an attack on an organization around a tweet it didn't like, what does it say that it did the same thing two days later?
We've previously documented a couple days ago how a Tweeted quip by the liberal blog Think Progress sent WND's Aaron Klein into such paroxysms of rage that he penned an entire screed smearing Think Progress as a "George Soros-funded advocacy blog that is a project of a radical left think tank with deep ties to the Obama administration." Think Progress has since tweeted advertisers on Donald Trump's TV show about Trump's "malicious attacks on our president," and that gave Klein all the excuse he needed to get all huffy again.
In an April 28 article, Klein again denounces Think Progress and its parent, the Center for American Progress, as a "liberal activist group funded by philanthropist George Soros." In case you didn't get the message, Klein uses the word "Soros" nine times in his article.
Again, remember: This is all about a couple of tweets. Talk about touchy.
Writing in an April 28 NewsBusters post about an examination of birther coverage on cable news, Lachlan Markay writes that "Of course even Fox News did its part to debunk the birther nonsense," adding, "The channel's hosts of course played no part in the conspiracy theory."
Media Matters points out that, in reality, numerous Fox News and Fox Business hosts pushed the heck out of that "birther nonsense."
And as Media Matters also notes, the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism's examination of birther coverage that Markay takes refuge in examines only prime-time evening shows on the cable networks, not daytime shows where Fox in particular pushed birther claims. Further, in the vast majority of Fox News items on the birther issue, false claims were not challenged or corrected.
WND Moves The Birther Goalposts To ... Adoption! Topic: WorldNetDaily
With the release of President Obama's long-form birth certificate, WorldNetDaily knew what it had to do: Invent ways to cast doubt upon it. And that's exactly what it's trying to do.
An April 28 article by Jerome Corsi expands on his earlier hypersensitive nitpicking to suggest that the certificate is not "legitimate," and another Corsi article nitpicks previous statements by Hawaii officials. But the main way WND is seeking to muddy the waters (today, anyway) is obsessing over the issue of adoption.
An April 28 article by Bob Unruh treats wth great significance a statement by Obama's half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, that Obama was "adopted" by his mother's second husband, Lolo Soetoro. If Obama was formally adopted, Unruh writes, "the mother and father can be changed on an original long-form birth certificate during the adoption process."
WND editor Joseph Farah takes that supposed ambiguity and runs with it:
We can hypothesize, of course, since no member of the media has bothered to ask the question. Let's guess that the adoption took place in Indonesia and Hawaii authorities were never notified. Does that change the reality of the adoption itself? Of course not. But it does invalidate the document we all saw this week for the first time. It is not an accurate reflection of the most basic facts needed to determine Obama's eligibility for the presidency. That document should list Indonesian citizen Lolo Soetoro as his father – not Kenyan Obama.
So here we have a man sitting in the White House who has two fathers – neither of which is able to confer U.S. citizenship on their son.
That's right -- after years of concern over who Obama's real father is, Farah is upset that Obama's real father is actually listed on his birth certificate.
Since it's clear that no evidence will sate the conspiratorial, hatred-driven urges of Farah and WND, why take them seriously?
MRC Pushes False Equivalence Between Birthers, Truthers Topic: Media Research Center
An April 26 MRC TimesWatch item by Clay Waters complains that the New York Times has been much harder on anti-Obama birthers than it has on 9/11 truthers, despite the truther stuff being "a far more pernicious anti-Republican conspiracy theory believed by many Democrats." In support of that claim, Waters only a 2006 poll in which "more than half" of Democrats -- well, 50.8% percent -- said it was "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that "people in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East."
In fact, trutherism was never as "pernicious" on the left as birtherism currently is on the right. As the American Prospect's Jamelle Bouie notes:
At no point were Democrats demanding trutherism from Democratic congressional candidates, much less presidential candidates. Despite the widespread presence of truther beliefs among Democrats, friendly state lawmakers never passed truther-influenced legislation, and trutherism remained on the far fringe of liberal discourse.
By contrast (and this is an important contrast), birtherism is all but an established issue priority within the Republican coalition; GOP presidential candidates will be judged on their adherence to birther conspiracies, and the eventual nominee will have to placate birthers for success. In other words, even with the (formerly?) widespread presence of truther beliefs among Democrats, it's still hard to make a direct comparison between trutherism and birtherism.
The Prospect's Adam Serwer adds than no prominent Republican has come out as forcefully against birtherism than Bill Clinton did in 2007 against truthers.
Waters does concede that the birther claims are "discredited," but the MRC has made virtually no effort to do any meaningful pushback against them.
AIM Brings Back Blogger Whose Post It Had to Retract -- Again Topic: Accuracy in Media
Remember Allie Duzett? She's the one-time Accuracy in Media intern who wrote a blog post libelously calling Obama administration offical Kevin Jennings a "pedophile," forcing AIM to delete the post and issue a retraction and quasi-apology.
You'd think that exposing it to litigation would be a disincentive for AIM to continue its association with Duzett, but AIM brought her back for a few more posts last September, and she even made her way to the Heritage Foundation as a blogger for a while.
Well, guess who has resurfaced at AIM? Duzett contributed an April 28 blog post titled "Media Bias in Strategic Word Choice." Of course, Duzett does have some experience on that front; her stragetic word choice in smearing Jennings as a "pedophile" was certainly biased (not to mention libelous).
The day before, Duzett wrote another blog post criticizing Tavis Smiley for claiming that Donald Trump was engaging in race-baiting. She responded that "media consumers should know that Smiley’s coverage at PBS comes from an anti-tea party bent that finds racism in those who support small government and disagree with President Obama’s agenda." And Duzett's coverage at AIM comes from an anti-gay bent that finds pedophilia in those who oppose discrimination based on sexual orientation.
WND Harangues Think Progress Over Tweet It Didn't Like Topic: WorldNetDaily
Just how thin-skinned are Joseph Farah and WorldNetDaily about criticism? Something as insubstantial as a Twitter post will bring down WND's wrath.
That's the case with an April 26 WND article by Aaron Klein. Responding to a tweet by the liberal blog Think Progress that WND's upcoming cruise to Alaska is the "worst vacation ever," Klein delivered one of his patented guilt-by-association harangues, denouncing Think Progress as a "George Soros-funded advocacy blog that is a project of a radical left think tank with deep ties to the Obama administration."
Also damning evidence against Think Progress: It supposedly "routinely reprints pieces by the Soros-funded Media Matters for America." Klein offers no evidence for this.
Fully half of the Klein's article was copied-and-pasted bullet points from a report issued by Think Progress' parent, the "radical left think tank" Center for American Progress, containing "Recommendations to Advance Progressive Change." That's just padding; apparently, Klein's outrage wasn't enough to fill out the article.
WND picked an odd occasion to do some disclosure here, adding an editor's note that "Aaron Klein is one of the featured speakers on the 2011 WND cruise to Alaska." Meanwhile, WND routinelyhides its conflicts of interest on much more substantive matters.
Corsi Invokes Nixon, Then Claims A Lame 'Rosetta Stone' Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's Jerome Corsi was in full conspiratorial mode in reacting to the release of President Obama's long-form birth certificate. In an April 27 WND article, he declared that "Obama blinked," adding:
"Public pressure finally forced Obama to do what he did today. Now the game begins," said Corsi. "Nixon thought he could stop the Watergate scandal from unfolding by releasing a few tapes. All that did was fuel the fire."
A birth certificate is the same as the Watergate scandal? Really?
Corsi also tosses in some self-promotion of his upcoming birther book, insisting, "When people read the book, they will see that Obama is not eligible to be president."
Corsi continued his conspiracy-mongering in a separate April 27 column, in which he brought up a new claim:
A key problem for Obama is that birth certificates issued to twin girls born one day later at Kapi'olani hospital, the Nordykes, are the Rosetta Stone of deciphering both Obama's previously released short-form Certification of Live Birth and the newly released purported copy of his long-form birth certificate.
In short, Corsi says the issue is that Obama's birth certificate was given a higher registration number than the Nordyke twins, even though he was born a day earlier. This, supposedly, raises questions because, in addition, Obama's birth "was registered with the Hawaii Department of Health registrar three days earlier" than the Nordyke twins.
We'll invoke Occam's Razor and posit something that appears not to have occurred to Corsi -- that the assigning of registration numbers by the Hawaii Department of Health was done randomly and not done by order of birth or order of arrival in the office. Corsi provides no evidence that the assigning of registration numbers was ever dictated, then or now, by those standards, or that the number order on the Obama and Nordyke birth certificates is a deviation from whatever the practice may have been at the time.
That's not a "Rosetta Stone"; that's bureaucratic procedure.
If Corsi is clinging to such a thin, dubious claim -- and has to resort to dredging up Nixon to attack Obama -- it's highly doubtful that his book will prove much of anything.
Tim Adams Is Back, And Angrier Than Ever Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's favorite election temp worker, Tim Adams, resurfaces in an April 27 article by Joe Kovacs to share his thoughts on President Obama's long-form birth certificate. And boy, is he angry:
Adams, a self-described liberal Democrat who thinks Obama is eligible for office because his mother was American, lamented what he feels is an out-of-control federal government, explaining, "There is a group of men and women who currently are waging multiple, illegal wars, paying off special interests with taxpayer monies, violating every law on the books, and operating as if we were subjects to be dictated to at gunpoint; this must end. Obama's controversy is just a symptom of the overall filth that is Washington. These people must be held accountable, must be punished, and must be removed from power, by whatever means are necessary. As for their excuses, every perp has a f---ing excuse."
Specifically concerning Obama, Adams said, "President Obama's problems as a politician, his active membership and support of a racist, religious group; his friendship with a known terrorist and murderer; his extremism; his use of executive orders; his contempt of the rule of law and the limits of government power; his violence and murder around the world; his failed economic and social policies; his rewarding of his political friends and the active spoils system he operates, the corruption and crime of the Daly machine bunch he came out of in Chicago – none of these have gone away.
[...]
Concerning the actual image of what is claimed to be the president's original long-form birth certificate, Adams said, "If this document is indeed valid – and I'm not going into the questions of validity – it proves what I said before, that the so-called COLBs (Certifications of Live Birth) that were posted online over the last three years are in fact forgeries and not State of Hawaii issued documents."
One of the reasons Adams is angry is that, as Kovacs notes, Adams "has claimed he was told by his superiors a long-form birth certificate for Barack Obama did not exist in the Aloha State." Oops! Adams even signed an WND-supplied affidavit attesting to that -- as well as to other claims Adams has no firsthand knowledge of -- but Kovacs makes no mention of it.
Adams' complaint about Obama's purported link to a "racist" group is particularly rich given Adams' own racist links. As we documented, Adams first made his now-discredited claim about the birth certificate on a radio show that claims to "represent a philosophy that is pro-White" while the host was broadcasting from the national conference of the Council of Conservative Citizens, described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a "white supremacist" "hate group." Kovacs, has he always has, ignores this too.
Adams was never a credible source, no matter how much Kovacs and WND pretended he was, and this utter destruction of his central claim makes that crystal clear. This, of course, won't stop WND from continuing to pretend otherwise.
Newsmax's Latest Round of Trump-Fluffing, Birth Certificate Edition Topic: Newsmax
The release of President Obama's long-form birth certificate prompted Newsmax to do what it already seems genetically predisposed to do: give even more fawning coverage to Donald Trump.
Newsmax got the obligatory post-release "exclusive interview" with Trump, in which he called Obama a "very strange president," joined by an article highlighting Rush Limbaugh's praise for Trump.
(Newsmax did manage to come up with the most bizarre take on the birth certificate, an interview with an astrologer who concluded from the information on it that Obama "should have gone into public relations rather than politics.")
Newsmax also engaged in some self-congratulatory Trump-fluffing as well, touting how "Newsmax’s Donald Trump presidential poll has now received more than a phenomenal 1 million responses!" Newsmax didn't say how much it spent to promote the meaningless poll. This was followed by an article stating how Trump is "honored" by the poll results.
As we've noted, Newsmax leaked early poll results to Trump, who then promoted it in interviews as evidence he's a serious presidential candidate.
