Geoffrey Dickens has absolutely no evidence that Jon Stewart's "Daily Show" joke that Herman Cain doesn't "like to read" is "racially charged" -- indeed, as the transcript Dickens supplies in his June 10 NewsBusters post demonstrates, the full context of the joke makes it clear that Stewart was mocking Cain's contention that legislation should run no longer than three pages.
But Dickens has decided it is anyway, putting "racially charged" in his headline. His reasoning? "The Daily Show" might have said that if a right-wing radio host had said the same thing about President Obama. No, really:
It would be unfair to call Jon Stewart a racist but when he mocked GOP presidential contender Herman Cain as essentially an illiterate, on Thursday's show, it has to be asked wouldn't Stewart and his cronies at The Daily Show have satirized any sort of conservative talk show host, like a Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, as a bigot if they had joked that President Barack Obama didn't "like to read?"
So it's unfair for Dickens to call Stewart a racist but perfectly in bounds to falsely call Stewart's joke "racially charged" when he has no evidence to back him up? We're confused.
The whining continues in yet another WorldNetDaily article baselessly suggesting that White House press secretary Jay Carney knew what WND reporter Les Kinsolving would ask and refused to let him ask it.
Even though Kinsolving was not going to ask anything about net neutrality, WND goes on to whine about that, too, rehashing a previous WND article:
WND has reported the FCC colluded with a George Soros-funded, Marxist-founded organization to publicly push a new plan to regulate the Internet under the government’s "net neutrality" program, according to just released documents.
The shock material was released in response to a Freedom of Information request from Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption
The released documents include internal correspondence and emails evidencing some coordination between FCC officials and leaders of Free Press, a controversial nonprofit which petitions for more government control of the Internet and news media.
In fact, there was no collusion, and the communications between the FCC and Free Press were no different than between other interest groups and the government.
Newsmax Publishes, Then Deletes, Poorly Written Article on Palin Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax his historically shilled for Sarah Palin -- especially after Palin declared herself to be a regular Newsmax reader. So it's odd that Newsmax would publish an strangely incoherent article on her.
An unbylined June 9 article began by claiming that “I can see Russia from my house” was one of Palin's catchphrases -- actually, that was Tina Fey's Palin parody that forwarded that -- before going on to criticize Palin's Facebook attack on President Obama's alleged plan to demilitarize Alaskan and share missile defense with other countries. The short article goes on to state that "It almost sounds like Palin is suggesting a better route would be to sell the technology to Russia," but that she actually "ndicates it is irresponsible for the government to leak America’s military secrets to any foreign body — whether they pay for them or not."
It's not very well written, so much so that the Palin-philes at Conservatives 4 Palin declared the piece to be an attack on her.
Newsmax has now deleted the article; its URL now returns an empty page.
Jerome Corsi has turned in to WorldNetDaily the last of three articles on Doug Vogt's claim that President Obama's long-form birth certificate is a fake.
As with the previoustwo articles, Corsi refuses to acknowledge that the Obama Conspiracy blog has provided a detailed rebuttal discrediting many of Vogt's claims.
But that's not all: In an interview with insanely anti-Obama pastor James David Manning -- whom WND haspresented as a credible critic of Obama without noting that he has repeatedly insulted the president as a "long-legged mack daddy" -- Vogt can't even correctly identify what PDF stands for and falsely claims that a consortium developed the PDF format. In fact, PDF began as a proprietary format created and owned by Adobe Systems, and it did not become an open standard until 2008.
This is Corsi's "expert," folks.
It seems that Corsi cares nothing about the truth when it conflicts with his anti-Obama agenda.
Huma Abedin (And Clinton) Derangement Syndrome Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
The real scandal is Weiner's practicing Muslim wife, Huma Abedin. Ms. Abedin became Mrs. Weiner in 2010, at a wedding "presided over by President Bill Clinton." Mr. Clinton, of course, "presides" at any typical New Yorker's wedding, upon request.
You don't think so? Neither do I.
Mrs. Weiner is in fact Hillary Clinton's top State Department aide. She has been Mrs. Clinton's top aide in a variety of positions since coming to the White House as an intern in 1996. Persistent reports indicate that some of those positions have been very personal, indeed.
Leaving aside the politically arranged aspects of Mr. Weiner's marriage, one wonders what a Jewish boy from New York, schooled by Sen. Charlie Schumer, might have in common with a practicing Muslim wife? Especially one who spends most of her time on the road with the U.S. secretary of state. One who visits her mother in Saudi Arabia.
The Saudis, you may remember, provided most of the passports to the jihadists who flew jetliners into the World Trade Center.
It gets worse. The little weasel is a newlywed. His unfortunate wife is an exotic Iranian-Pakistani beauty, Huma Abedin, the deputy chief of staff to Hillary Rodham Clinton. Weiner and Abedin were married last year by none other than the philanderer in chief, Bill Clinton. No wonder Weiner thinks he can keep his day job.
Abedin has been at Hillary Clinton's side for 15 years and was there through the Lewinsky scandal.
(Unofficial) advise from the former first lady to Abedin: "Any publicity is good publicity. Hold you head up high. Let your lip quiver occasionally when it suits your purpose but don't divorce him. That's too good for the -----. See if he survives. Then, have him carry your purse and stand behind you as you run for mayor of New York City (the job Weiner covets)."
Buck up, Anthony. You picked the wrong mate to cheat on. You are not dealing with amateurs here.
(Bonus flashback derangement: Jack Wheeler wrote in a 2008 WND article that Abedin had a "lesbian affair" with Hillary Clinton, who has a "well-known bisexuality.")
WND Hypes Mosque Report By Anti-Muslim Author Topic: WorldNetDaily
In a June 8 WorldNetDaily article, Bob Unruh touted "survey compiled by Mordechai Kedar and David Yerushalmi and published by the Middle East Quarterly" claiming that "Dozens of mosques around the United States have been identified in a new study as incubators for jihad against America, with more than 80 percent of those surveyed advocating violence."
What Unruh didn't tell you: One of the authors of the study has a history of anti-Muslim bigotry.
As Media Matters details, Yerushalmi, has been cited by the Anti-Defamation League for his "record of anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-black bigotry," and he has even defended the anti-Semitism of Mel Gibson and Pat Buchanan. The organization Yerushalmi founded, Society of Americans for National Existence, has proposed legislation that furthering or supporting adherence to Shari'a "shall be a felony punishable by 20 years in prison."
Meanwhile, Richard Bartholomew notes that Yerushalmi -- who has seved as an attorney for rabidly anti-Muslim writer (and newly minted WND columnist) Pamela Geller -- uses questionable methodology in his survey, calling his approach "of very limited value and is probably even misleading."Bartholomew also notes that the journal that published this study, Middle East Quarterly, has a history of rejecting peer review of its article because it claims most specialists were not interested in “American interests” or were hostile to USA.
Not only does Unruh not mention any of this, he does not permit any contradictory views of the study. So much for journalism.
Root Laments That Businesses Can't Easily Cheat On Taxes Anymore Topic: WorldNetDaily
Wayne Allyn Root writes in his June 9 Newsmax column:
Finally, Obama purposely leaves out the important fact that only in the last 30 years have we moved away from a cash economy. Tax rates at 70 percent or higher didn’t matter prior to 1980 because most small businesses earned unreported cash. Today we have a computerized economy based on credit cards.
Virtually every dollar that every business takes in is tracked and reported. So tax rates are immaterial — all of us are paying more in taxes than ever before. To not report that difference is deceptive.
Is Root saying it was OK for business to cheat on their taxes by not reporting cash income? That's not exactly the behavior of an ethical businessman, particularly one with presidential aspirations (Root was the 2008 Libertarian Party vice presidential nominee and proclaims himself to be "the leading contender for the 2012 Libertarian Presidential nomination").
What Happened To TV Ad Campaign For Corsi Book (And The Money Farah Begged Readers For To Fund it)? Topic: WorldNetDaily
Bach in March, we wondered why WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah was begging for money to run commercials for Jerome Corsi's birther book. Now we must wonder what happened to those commercials -- and the money.
In a March 27 article, WND kicked off its publicity campaign for Corsi's "Where's the Birth Certificate?" by declaring that "WND needs to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to air these commercials on television networks and stations throughout the country" and begging readers for money, with only the promise of a signed copy of Corsi's book in return.
But to our knowledge, no commercials for the book have ever aired on TV. And the page at the WND online store to donate to the ad campaign now redirects to a general page about Corsi's book, with no mention whatsoever about the donation drive.
So what happened? Did nobody answer Farah's pleas, perhaps concluding that, since WND is a for-profit operation, he can use his own money to buy ads? Or did Farah decide that the book received enough free publicity (i.e., from Drudge) that paid advertising was superfluous?
And if people did donate to the ad campaign, what happened to that money? Did Farah return it, or is he hoarding it for some future Obama-bashing endeavor?
Farah has generally declared himself exempt from the accountability he demands from others. Given that this is a case that involves him publicly soliciting money from others for his business ventures, it would be prudent and moral of him to just as publicly account for where the heck that money went and prove that it wasn't diverted to, say, WND's day-to-day operations or remodeling his house.
Then again, he never promised accountability, so one could say that Farah's scam of profiting off other people's money appears to have been a success -- not exactly a business model most reputable schools teach.
Latest CNS Attack On Obama Turns Nitpicky, Lame Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com's Patrick Goodenough actually devoted a June 7 article to this:
When President Obama last week invoked the regular six-month waiver to bypass U.S. law mandating that the American Embassy in Israel be moved to Jerusalem, the notice was released on Friday afternoon, a common time for the White House to “dump” material that ends up drawing little media attention.
That's the attack. Really.
Of course, Goodenough waits until the eighth paragraph to inform his readers that President Bush had the same exact policy. But:
A striking difference between Obama’s waiver notifications and those of President Bush is that in Bush’s case, he inserted into the legal jargon a sentence stating, “My Administration remains committed to beginning the process of moving our embassy to Jerusalem.” The phrase appeared in all 16 Bush waiver notifications.
Clinton did not include those or similar words in his notices, and after Obama took office, he dropped Bush’s wording.
Also:
Obama has now issued five waiver notifications, with four of the five released on Fridays. (The exception was on June 2, 2010, a Wednesday.)
Of the 16 times Bush invoked the waiver during his two terms, four were released on Fridays (Dec. 14, 2001, Jun. 14, 2002, Jun. 13, 2003 and Jun.1, 2007). Most were typically released on Tuesdays or Wednesdays.
Clinton invoked the waiver four times between June 1999 and December 2000 – twice on a Friday and once each on a Monday and Thursday.
Things were apparenly a little slow in CNS headquarters over the weekend if this is the only Obama attack they could come up with.
NEW ARTICLE: WorldNetDaily's Stupid Birth Certificate Tricks Topic: WorldNetDaily
WND is betting it all that President Obama's birth certificate is fake -- which explains the increasingly desperate and dishonest ways Jerome Corsi and Co. are trying to prove it. Read more >>
Flashback: MRC Defended Vitter From Media During Prostitute Scandal Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center, needless to say, is ecstatic about the sexting scandal involving Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner, which launched it into its usual mode of self-righteous right-wing activism on media coverage.
The MRC was quick to run to the defense of right-wing blogger Andrew Breitbart, whose websites first reported the sexting claims against Weiner. Lachlan Markay, in a June 7 NewsBusters post, was upset that some were pointing out that Breitbart has a history of targeting Democrats and a checkered past, while another NewsBusters post by Alex Fitzsimmons complained that some were "besmirching" Breitbart and "assault[ing] Breitbart's credibility." Noel Sheppard also ran to Breitbart's defense, grumbling that some were "fixating on Breitbart to minimize the seriousness of this issue." The MRC's Matthew Balan, meanwhile, huffed that CNN's Anderson Cooper "played up Breitbart's supposedly 'questionable credibility.'"
Also needless to say, none of these writers conceded that Breitbart does, in fact, have credibility problems.
It was just a few years ago, however, that the MRC engaged in exactly the same behavior it criticizes now -- attacking the credibility of a activist leveling sex-related accusations against a politician. Of course, that politician was a Republican.
A July 2007 MRC Culture & Media Institute column by David Niedrauer responded to Hustler publisher Larry Flynt's expose of Republican Sen. David Vitter's "dalliances with prostitutes" not by criticizing Vitter but by attacking Flynt as "a political partisan with an axe to grind," and complaining that "The media are regurgitating Flynt's gotcha spin on Vitter while largely ignoring Flynt's agenda and partisan history":
Flynt, who has a history of savage attacks against social conservatives going back to the 1980s, found Vitter's telephone number in the telephone list of Pamela Martin & Associates, which federal prosecutors accuse of being a prostitution service.
The founder of Hustler magazine, Flynt is a self-described nemesis of the religious right. Flynt has embarked on a new campaign against what he calls “hypocrisy” in conservative lawmakers after placing an ad in the Washington Post in early June offering $1 million to anyone who could document a past “sexual encounter” with a member of Congress or a “high-ranking government official.”
Flynt conceded on the MSNBC show Live with Dan Abrams last week that his feud against conservative Republicans is personal as well as political: “Well, Dan, I've been jailed nine times, been shot and paralyzed, all for publishing Hustler magazine. So let's just say that it's payback now, and payback's a bitch.”
“I've been a die-hard Democrat all my life," continued Flynt, adding gleefully that most of the Republicans he's exposed over the years for sexual indiscretions “have actually been fundamentalists.”
Gee, we don't recall the MRC describing Breitbart as "a political partisan with an axe to grind," even though he's no less of one than Flynt is.
Even years after Vitter's scandal was exposed -- with Flynt yet to be discredited over it -- the MRC was still attacking Flynt's credibility. In an October 2010 NewsBusters post, Rich Noyes lamented that in a CNN appearance, host Don Lemon asked Flynt to "regurgitate tawdry details of Republican Senator David Vitter’s prostitution scandal" and was "begging Flynt to reveal 'tips' and 'hints' about other politicians who might be exposed." Baker huffed, "It’s bizarre that an anchor on CNN, which touts itself as 'the most trusted name in news,' would ask a pornographer to smear public officials by name without any independent journalistic corroboration."
Did the MRC demand "independent journalistic corroboration" for Breitbart's claims about Weiner before embracing them? We didn't think so.
By its own standards, the MRC should have shunned Breitbart's claims about Weiner until they were independently verified. It didn't -- making this yet another on the long list of the MRC double standards.
For NewsBusters, Random Blog Commenter = 'The Left' Topic: NewsBusters
Tom Blumer spends a June 5 NewsBusters post defending Mitt Romney from an Associated Press fact-check (one of two posts Blumer devoted to the subject). Blumer got a little more desperate to attack AP as he went along.
After the AP declared that, despite Romney's assertion to the contrary, Obama has issued "no formal - or informal - apology" for America or "No saying "sorry" on behalf of America," Blumer declared he could read Obama's mind as towhat he really meant:
Oh please, guys. Obama never said "sorry," so making it a point to recite to the nations of the world a litany of the allegedly horrible things we've done during the course of our history doesn't count? Plenty of people on the left and the right have interpreted what Obama has done as the functional equivalent of "apologizing."
Blumer's evidence that "the left" has "interpreted" what Obama said as "apologizing" was a link to a commenter on a New York Times blog post who wrote that "Obama has done the right thing and apologized for his predecessor, Bush."
Blumer has decided that this random commenter speaks for the entire "left," apparently.
Blumer's example of "the right" agreeing that Obama apologized is a hateful screed by Washington Times columnist Jeffrey Kuhner who smeared Obama as "a cultural Muslim who is promoting an anti-American, pro-Islamic agenda."
Is Blumer endorsing the views of a man who has a long history of unhinged rhetoric? It sure seems like it.
WND Columnist Pines For Days When Homosexuality Was Illegal Topic: WorldNetDaily
Most recently, Focus on the Family announced that they wouldn't oppose a homosexual nominated to the Supreme Court over sexual orientation. A spokesperson for the organization commented in 2009 that the nominee's sexual orientation "should never come up" because "it's not even pertinent to the equation." Not even relevant to know if an individual appointed for life to the highest court in the nation has a traditional view of the family, or is a self-avowed homosexual? Where did that come from? Certainly America's Founding Fathers would be shocked, since they followed lock-step with Christian Western tradition that criminalized homosexuality.
Today's conservative Christian leaders believe what was scandalous just 30 years ago: that homosexuality should be legal. Back in the Dark Ages, way back in 1986 when the Supreme Court upheld Georgia's anti-sodomy law, Christian leaders actually believed that homosexual behavior should be criminal. Their beliefs have changed rather quickly with the culture, preferring to garner social acceptance through a moral fluidity that reminds me of Groucho Marx's quip: "If you don't like my principles, I have others."
Despite victories for traditional marriage in states across the Union, social conservatives are losing because they've missed the heart of the issue. Same-sex marriage is a diversion. The real battle is over the morality of homosexuality itself.
CNS Charges Kagan Conflict of Interest on Health Care, Ignores Thomas' Topic: CNSNews.com
Over the past few months, CNSNews.com has been trying to force Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan to recuse herself from ruling on challenges to President Obama's health care reform law because she might have worked on the issue as Obama's solicitor general.
It hasn't been very successful so far at proving its case. In a March 29 article, editor Terry Jeffrey conceded that emails CNS obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request -- the only evidence it has so far -- do not show that Kagan "express[ed] an 'opinion concerning the merits' of the lawsuits filed against the health care law -- an act that would trigger one of the recusal standards" under federal law.
Jeffrey gave it another shot in a June 3 article, Jeffrey tried to reframe things by baselessly asserting that "When Kagan assigned [then-assistant Neal] Katyal to handle the expected litigation challenging President Obama’s health-care law she was a legal partisan in the matter." Jeffrey offered no new evidence to back up his claim, just a reinterpretation of the FOIA emails.
Meanwhile, there's a another conflict-of-interest issue brewing. Justice Clarence Thomas' wife, Ginni, is a right-wing activist who founded Liberty Central, a group that has attacked health care reform. An article on the Libery Central website originally credited to Ginni Thomas, then changed to a different byline and ultimately removed, attacked health care reform as unconstitutional.
Further, Thomas failed to state his wife's income on financial disclosure forms, despite the fact that she earned hundreds of thousands of dollarsover the last several years working for right-wing groups like Liberty Central and the Heritage Foundation. Thomas has since filed amended forms that list his wife's income.
Curiously, CNS has never addressed Clarence Thomas' apparent conflict-of-interest issue regarding his wife's activism -- let alone his failure to disclose his wife's income -- even though it's at least as major as the issue regarding Kagan. Jeffrey and crew, it seems, are simply protecting an ideological soul mate until it can figure out how to plausibly explain it away. But the fact that it has remained silent for so long indicates that no such defense exists.
WND Shocked To Discover Movie Set In China Is 'Distinctly Eastern' Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily movie reviewer Drew Zahn, who we saw last complaining that the Disney movie "Tangled" teaches children to think for themselves, finds something objectionable in the new movie "Kung Fu Panda 2." Namely, that a movie about a panda living in China doesn't try to shove a Christian agenda down the throats of its viewers.
In his review, Zahn grumbles that the film is "distinctly Eastern" in its presentation of the idea that you must find your own path to inner peace:
For Po's desire to know where he came from and what happened to his birth parents is a quest put before him by his Kung Fu master, who tells him "every master must find his path to inner peace," some through meditation, some through fasting and some through pain.
"Once I found inner peace," his master explains, "I was able to harness the power of the universe."
This Eastern, mystic, New Age-like blather, unfortunately, pervades the film. It's the protagonist panda's prime motivation. It's the underlying religion upon which the movie builds its otherwise positive message.
Yet no matter how pretty and positive the film's message may be, building a pretty pagoda on such a sandy foundation makes the entire structure in danger of falling down (Matthew 7:24-27). Indeed, the absence of real meat in the storyline, depth in the characters or truth in the moral of the story make "Kung Fu Panda 2" a sequel worth skipping.
Zahn adds: "Forgiveness might have been a nice touch, but perhaps that's a bit 'too Christian' for this distinctly Eastern film."
