It's not often you see anyone defending predatory payday lenders, but John Berlau does just that in an Aug. 12 Newsmax column.
Such a questionable defense is apparently the only way Berlau could find to attack Consumer Financial Protection Bureau nominee. Richard Cordray. Berlau declared Cordray, the former Ohio attorney general, to be a "paternalistic politico" whose "philosophy was ban first, ask questions later." The example of this supposed behavior Berlau cited was payday loans, which he eupemistically described as "small, short-term loans." Berlau -- a former writer for the now-defunct Moonie-owned magazine Insight who now heads the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Center for Investors and Entrepeneurs -- then went into shill mode to whitewash the payday loan industry:
First, something about the economics about short-term loans, also known as payday loans or cash advances. Typically, lenders will charge $15 per $100 borrowed for a period of two weeks.
Often, misplaced outrage is expressed that that interest is more than 300 percent when measured as an annual percentage rate (APR). But this is an ill-fitting measure, because very few customers take a year to pay these loans off.
Frequently, unexpected circumstances like a car breaking down or the need for travel hits folks who are low on cash at the moment but can pay back their loan in full in two to four weeks.
Berlau seemed to blame Cordray for the payday loan interest cap instituted in Ohio; in fact, it was a ballot initiative that passed with a whopping 63 percent of the vote. Berlau did directly blame Cordray for closing a loophole that allowed payday lenders to substitute other fees to replace the exhorbitant interest charges:
But others found ways to utilize the state laws governing small lender that specifically allowed lenders to charge processing fees. The fees ended up being comparable to the old rates of interest. As explained by PaydayLoanIndustryBlog, “when a payday loan was transacted [previously] . . . a loan customer paid $575 to receive $500 in cash.”
But after the old laws were utilized in the wake of the interest cap, “with the check cashing fees added, customers pay the same $575 to walk out the door with $500 in cash”
Instead of taking this as evidence that the fees for small loans were never that excessive in the first place, he called for the Ohio legislature to pass new laws so lenders wouldn’t “continue gouging consumers through exorbitant fees.”
The individual’s lack of responsibility for his or her own circumstances has been a theme of Cordray’s regulatory enforcement endeavors. As attorney general, he tried to strong-arm banks that service mortgages and mortgage investors into reducing loan principal and interest for borrowers, even when no lender wrongdoing was found.
Berlau seems to be saying that payday loan lenders have every right to take their customers for every penny they can get away with. That's not exactly building the good kind of loyalty, is it?
WND Using Meaningless Imepachment Poll To Build Mailing List Topic: WorldNetDaily
While surfing the Web the other day, we noticed this ad from WorldNetDaily:
Clicking on the ad -- it's a Google AdSense ad, part of WND's continued softening of an anti-Google stance once so strident that WND devoted an entire chapter of his 2007 book "Stop the Presses" bashing the company -- takes you to a page featuring a poll on whether President Obama should be impeached. Much like Newsmax's online polls do, WND pretends this poll means something, claiming that "The results of these polls will be published online and are shared with major news networks and policymakers."
The real purpose of the poll is revealed by the information voters are required to provide: an email address and a zip code. The disclaimer at the end reads, "I understand that as a voter in this poll I will be signed up for FREE Worldnet Daily alerts. I can unsubscribe at any time. Votes with invalid emails will not be counted."
In other words, the poll is just a gimmick to build up WND's mailing list. Caveat emptor.
P.S. Notice that Obama is referred to only as "Barack Obama"; at no point does WND acknowledge that Obama is the president, which makes it unclear exactly from what job WND wants to see him impeached from.
Newsmax's Ruddy Declines Florida Senate Run Topic: Newsmax
Remember how Mike Haridopolos was Newsmax chief Christopher Ruddy's favorite candidate for a Florida Senate seat until his campaign kinda imploded last month? Well, Florida Republicans have been trolling for another candidate to join the race despite the existence of at least four other declared candidates, and one possibilty was ... Ruddy.
Chris Ruddy, CEO of the influential West Palm Beach-based conservative publication NewsMax, has ruled out jumping into the 2012 GOP Senate race.
But the fact that Ruddy was encouraged to consider running by Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio ("flattering," says Ruddy) is a sign of how unsettled the contest is for the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson.
Additional confirmation comes from last week's Quinnipiac University poll that showed 53 percent of Republican voters undecided in the Senate primary and Plant City tree farmer and retired Army Reserve Col. Mike McCalister leading the current four-candidate field with a meager 15 percent.
Ruddy has come a long way in the past 15 years, hasn't he? Then again, his Clinton-hating, muckraking past might not survive scrutiny today.
Jeffrey Obsessed With Mining Gallup Polls For Bad News About Obama Topic: CNSNews.com
You'd think that Terry Jeffrey, as editor in chief of a "news" organization like CNSNews.com, has better things to do than drilling down into Gallup polls for find the worst news he can about Obama.
Well, apparently not. Here is a list of Gallup poll-related articles Jeffrey has penned since Aug. 1:
Jeffrey has to do this himself? He can't use some of that $11 million the MRC has squirreled away to hire an intern to add bias to Gallup press releases?
Bozell Throws Christine O'Donnell Under the Bus Topic: Media Research Center
Last September, Brent Bozell and his Media Research Center issued a press release defending then-Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell against criticism of her in the media, declaring that "Christine O’Donnell and her Tea Party supporters have been smeared by every major broadcast and cable network since she won the Delaware primary against GOP establishment candidate on Tuesday night." Bozell himself added:
"This is mudsliging at its ugliest. Pure character assassination. These networks have never treated a viable Democratic candidate with this level of contempt. How dare they lecture anyone on manners or decency ever again.
"The MRC demands the media Tell The Truth! about the Tea Party, its momentum and the revolution of people whose votes are proving America is fed up with Washington."
Bozell ignored the fact that it was largely conservative commentators like Karl Rove who were the most critical of her.
O'Donnell lost the election, and now it seems Bozell wants nothing more to do with her. In the wake of O'Donnell's walking out on an interview with CNN's Piers Morgan, Bozell issued a statement making that abundantly clear:
In short, O'Donnell's behavior was beyond indefensible. It was downright bizarre.
The questions Piers Morgan put forward may have been trite, even seemingly silly, but given to whom they were being posed, they were not inappropriate. He asked if in her heart O'Donnell has committed lust.
He asked her views on gay marriage. He asked her views on witchcraft and on masturbation. Titillating questions? Sure, but O'Donnell has staked out public opinions on all these fronts and it is those public statements she's made that invite questions like his. She had to know she'd be asked these things when she accepted the interview invitation. If she didn't then she's living in a parallel universe. Moreover, Morgan was neither Chris Matthews rude nor Keith Olbermann offensive. He simply asked the questions.
O'Donnell had no right to reject the questions. Even worse, in declaring them inappropriate she made an ass of herself.
She answered the gay marriage question by declaring, over and over, that the answer could be found in her book, which book she was there to promote, except she refused to discuss her position on gay marriage, which was in the book. She declared she was there to "talk about the issues I chose to talk about in the book," and when asked by Morgan, "Do you answer that question in the book?" she answered, "I talk about my religious beliefs, yes. I absolutely do." But she wouldn't answer his question about gay marriage, and instead accused him of being rude to her.
Nonsensical is too kind. She is a buffoon.
O'Donnell had no right to walk off the set. But in a sense I'm glad she did -- if it means she'll never come back. Conservatives do themselves no favors by defending this woman and she is doing conservatives no favors by going on national television programs to talk about -- God only knows what she'll talk about, or not talk about, next. Please, Christine O'Donnell, call it a day.
Nevertheless, MRC employee Noel Sheppard defended the walkout, complaining in an Aug. 18 NewsBusters post that "America currently has 9.1 percent unemployment, plummeting home and stock prices, a debt explosion, a credit rating problem, and Medicare going bankrupt in twelve years," adding, "With all the problems we're currently facing, wouldn't it be better to focus on what is really concerning the public? Or is that not good for ratings?"
WorldNetDaily, meanwhile, also took O'Donnell's side. In an Aug. 20 WND "news" article, Anita Crane parroted O'Donnell's complaints, fawned over her appearance at a tea party event in Virginia, and ignored Bozell's claim that O'Donnell should have expected such questions from Morgan given her history of discussing them in public.
Of course, WND has its reasons for whitewashing O'Donnell: Its online store is selling her book, and it doesn't want to cut into sales.
Tim Adams' Crappy Master's Thesis Topic: WorldNetDaily
In reviewing Jack Cashill's WorldNetDaily column on Tim Adams and his master's thesis, we noted that the thesis contains even more distortions and omissions of fact than Cashill's column -- things that should have raised concerns among the thesis committee at Western Kentucky University, where Adams is obtaining his master's degree. We will examine them here.
One only needs to look at the title page for a big red flag in the form of an embarrassing misspelling of Obama's name:
What self-respecting professor would not have rejected Adams' thesis outright for this massive typo alone?
Adams makes other embarrassing errors as well. For instance, he writes, "The other reason anyone daring to call the current administration into question is because to quote the Rolling Stones, 'Meet the new boss/same as the old boss' ('Teenage Wasteland')" -- managing to get both the name of the song the lyric comes from and the band that performed it completely wrong. (It's "Won't Get Fooled Again" by The Who.) He also misspells WND editor Joseph Farah's name and commits the editing error of introducing him as "Mr. Farar" but not mentioning his first name until 12 pages later.
As for the thesis itself, once you get past the subpar stabs at Hunter Thompson-esque prose -- indeed, he portrays his entire birther adventure as an attempt at "gonzo" journalism -- it's clear that Adams does not want to tell the full story of "the conflicts surrounding speech and public discourse, and the barriers to and consequences for unpopular speech."
Adams portrays "Mr. Farar’s people at World Net Daily," along with the people at the tabloid the Globe, as outlets that treated himwell, as opposed to other outlets that "were something less than stellar when it came to the veracity and honesty of their reporting on me." But as we've detailed, WND did not engage in honesty and veracity in its reporting about Adams, actively hiding the fact that Adams first made his birther claims to a pro-white radio host broadcasting from a conference by an organization descended from Southern anti-integration activists.
Adams, like Cashill, attacks Keith Olbermann for pointing out those racist ties, claiming that "Olbermann’s smear was universally panned" and citing in response a statement attributted only to "Gossip magazines picking up the story... June 13, 2010" without an endnote to document its source (unattributed quotes are another violation of master's thesis style).
Adams goes on to claim that "Several of the facts Olbermann claimed turned out to be untrue. The C of CC website had no such screed of racist dogma posted." Adams must have missed the following from the CofCC's statement of principles:
We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind, to promote non-white races over the European-American people through so-called “affirmative action” and similar measures, to destroy or denigrate the European-American heritage, including the heritage of the Southern people, and to force the integration of the races.
[...]
We support the cultural and national heritage of the United States and the race and civilization of which it is a part, as well as the expression and celebration of the legitimate subcultures and ethnic and regional identities of our people. We oppose all efforts to discredit, “debunk,” denigrate, ridicule, subvert, or express disrespect for that heritage.
Adams then throws in a bit of WND self-promotional boilerplate:
Keith Olbermann’s employer, MSNBC, has one million viewers. World Net Daily, whom Mr. Olbermann disparages, has five million regular subscribers and averages in excess of forty million individuals visiting per month. WND also has one of the stickiest ratings on the web, a rating based on the amount of time viewers actually spend on the site, averaging in excess of twenty minutes per visitor, far more time than the typical MSNBC viewer at approximately eight (8) minutes per broadcast.
Adams avoids explaining how closely he worked with WND in promoting his story. He has admitted with WND-affiliated lawyers supplied him with an affidavit for him to sign in which he repeated his core claim (for which he has never offered firsthand evidence to substantiate, only hearsay from his co-workers in Hawaii) that there is no long-form birth certificate for Obama in Hawaii state files -- a claim that was discredited when Obama authorized release of it in April, a few days before the May 1 date of Adams' thesis.
Adams even proudly proclaims that "On January 1st, 2011, my story was voted “The Most Covered-Up Story in America of 2010” by World Net Daily members and other Internet media members of the Associated Press." Adams gets it wrong here too; WND isn't a member of the AP, and any AP copy it features are links to other publications.
Adams also manages to miss the point of the method of Thompson's madness. He writes of his decision to attend the Council of Conservative Citizens conference, where he made his birther claim:
If Thompson’s “gonzo” is journalism as performance, then sometimes a performance can be a political tool as well. This is another technique I’ve taken from my two authors, for if I had made my initial public comments at some mainstream media outlet, they would never have been as effective. If one must go to a law enforcement conference to make an effective polemic on personal liberty (as Thompson did in Fear and Loathing), and if one must work for the National Park Service in order to sabotage the Bureau of Land Management (as Abbey did, working summers at fire stations), then where does one go to speak about issues of race and identity, if not a convention of racists?
Of course, birtherism is not about "issues of race and identity"; it's about trying to delegitimize a sitting president. And it doesn't help that Adam's birtherism comes off sounding just as crazy as the conference attendees he's purporting to mock:
In the case of President Obama’s natal narrative, a similar campaign of obfuscation has actively and admittedly been pursued by most of the major media, despite all evidence to the contrary. Groups like FactCheck.Org have a so-called Certification of Live Birth available on their website that purports to prove the President’s birth in Hawaii in 1961. The widespread media hyping of this forgery during the presidential elections of 2008 has led to several claims, none of which have any basis in reality.
Adams also forwards discredited birther claims which, as Adams seems to concede, have no basis in reality. For instance:
“The C.O.L.B. has been certified by the State of Hawaii and contains a Notary Seal from the State.”
Fact: Contrary to several media reports, it does not.
Finally, Adams seems to be oblivious (perhaps intentionally so) to the fact that his choice of venue to announce his birther claim served as a key reason not to take him seriously, or that it served as reasonable justification for believing that Adams himself had racist tendencies -- a conclusion he made little effort to address at the height of the conspiracy (remember, WND refused to honestly report this connection). Instead, he plays the victim, a truth-teller unfairly maligned:
So by telling a simple story about simple facts, I had found myself in the same position as Gideon, or perhaps Socrates, accused of corrupting youth and defaming popular idols (I was indeed accused of both charges after all anyone who instructs while holding unpopular opinions is automatically subversive). While Socrates went ahead and drank the hemlock, I took a page from Gideon and replied, “Let Baal contend for Baal if someone has broken his altar.” But as throughout all of human history, when the gods fail to show up, mercenaries from the priest’s temples still do. For you see, when gods do not act, those who rely on them for their daily bread suddenly realize they might miss a good meal.
At the end of his thesis, Adams then launches into a weird rant:
Please continue if you like, dear reader, with the idea that any criticism of Obama is just racism. Please tell me just how this loyalty to some part of the U.S. governing system has benefited black Americans? Are African-Americans better off today than twenty or thirty years ago? Whose communities suffer the most from government corruption and crimes? Whose communities suffer the most from the influx of illegal aliens and foreign immigration by non-Europeans? Black Americans used to be the number two population group in America; now they are the number four group, with both Asian and Hispanic minority groups outpacing their own population and rapidly displacing black Americans at every level of society. Entry-level jobs, college educations, medical care, political organization, personal and group wealth, life expectancy...all these indicators are now overwhelmingly in favor of non-Blacks.
The government the black community seems to so knee-jerk, genuflect before incarcerates, redlines, and ignores black Americans concerns. Homicide, police violence, and incarceration are the leading mortality and economic factors in over one half of all African-American men. STD rates, especially HIV, which hasn't gone away, is still infecting thirty thousand men who have sex with men, (gay or bi or straight on the down low, or incarcerated and forced into gay sex) every year. That's every single day, one- hundred men in America are infected, not counting their female partners, nor other groups. In some prisons, seventy-five percent of the male prison populations are infected with a variety of incurable and lethal diseases, including hepatitis, HIV, and HPV. Black communities suffer disproportionately from lack of infrastructure: an inner-city black neighborhood suffers the same lack of grocery stores, public transportation, and other access issues as a rural, white community located over thirty to fifty miles from any major city center.
Black education is a nightmare. Black students’ performance is much lower than other groups, and has stubbornly refused to improve despite forty years of manipulation of the educational system by—whom else?—the government.
Dear Black America: get real. The government is not only your enemy, it is the enemy of all poor in America, all marginalized in America, all workers in America, all families in America. The government, now led by a half-white man, is just another plan to get your vote while the ruling class (and they think they should rule over you), continues to abuse, steal, and screw your families, your communities and your futures. But don't worry, they're after all of us, or have you forgotten what your own Black leaders tried to tell you decades ago? They want to take away your rights and freedoms and make your their property all over again, only this time, it's not about race, it's all of us.
Get over Obama, he's one of them, and you've been sold a bill of goods.
How is it that this sloppily written, factually dishonest paper is considered to be a credible master's thesis by Western Kentucky University worthy of awarding a degree over? That's an issue the WKU graduate faculty that signed off on this thesis need to answer.
UPDATE: Corrected the actual song title from which Adams pulled the Who lyric.
Newsmax Repeats AZ Gov's Falsehood About Immigration Plan Topic: Newsmax
Martin Gould and Kathleen Walter begin an Aug. 19 Newsmax article this way:
President Barack Obama has finally come up with a plan for jobs, Arizona governor Jan Brewer said on Friday. The only problem is that it will only benefit illegal immigrants!
Brewer was leading the attack on the White House after details of a new deportation policy became clear. Officers have been told only to go after illegal aliens who have a criminal record and leave others alone.
That's a completely false interpretation of the immigration policy change that was recently implemented. The policy change simply invokes prosecutorial discretion to focus efforts in deporting illegal immigrants on those who have committed crimes. Similar prosecutorial discretion in deportation cases was excercised under the Bush administration.
CNS Adds Anti-Immigrant Bias to AP Story Topic: CNSNews.com
The headline on an Aug. 19 Associated Press article, as sent out by AP, reads "US makes criminals priority for deportation."
But that wasn't anti-immigrant enough for CNSNews.com. It changed the headline to read, "Obama Administration Grants De Facto Amnesty to Many Illegal Immigrants."
CNS has madeahabit of adding right-wing bias to AP headlines.
Really?! A man who still has not proven he is a "natural born citizen" and therefore constitutionally eligible for the presidency and who released a definitively fraudulent birth certificate after years of stonewalling? Is that consistent with a fair democratic process? More importantly, we have seen what this "mullah in chief" and promoter of Islam has done not just to our country but our most important ally, Israel.
Generally, I wouldn't put Barack Obama in the same category as Queen Marie Antoinette.
You remember her: the queen of France who famously lost her head – literally – as the French Revolution tore that country apart.
How could she – female, pampered, royal, wealthy, aristocrat – have any comparison to the man who is president of the United States at this pivotal time in history?
I never would have connected them, but the events playing out in Washington and in world politics have made me change my opinion.
I'd not been a scholar of the French Revolution – blame that on gaps in my education – but as time passed, I've learned a lot.
As I have said before, the happiest man in America must be James Earl Carter. Soon, hopefully as soon as November 2012, he will be replaced by Barack Hussein Obama as the worst president in America's history.
Once again adding to his list of "firsts," Obama will take the mantel of the "worst" from a man who allowed America to be taken hostage and who presided over 16 percent inflation, prompting his famous malaise speech. He was a president America could not get rid of fast enough.
The only other "first" many of us would welcome would be a change of direction by the ideologue known as Barack Obama. That would take a first from Mr. Obama's repertoire: bravery and humility.
As Richard Weaver cautioned us in his 1948 classic, ideas do indeed have consequences. Weaver's description of the "spoiled-child psychology of the urban masses" sheds light on the tactics of today's radical left, especially the recent actions of our Spoiled-Child-in-Chief, whose ideas have led to catastrophic consequences at home and around the globe.
King Obama, who had never run so much as a lemonade stand, has surrounded himself with tax cheats and economic "yes" men like Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who admitted that he has "never had a real job." The same holds true for most other members of his royal court. The notable exception is his chief of staff, Bill Daley, the token businessman – a sop to "diversity."
The dearly departed include such notables as Council of Economic Advisors Chairwoman Christina Romer, National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers, budget chief Peter Orszag and Jared Bernstein, the economic adviser to the business-challenged veep. The latest to go is recovery guru Austan Goolsbee. All but Orszag came from academia and returned to academia, giving new importance to the adage: "Those who can do: Those who can't teach."
Thus, it is not out of character for Marxist thugs to engage in Marxist thug techniques to win hearts and minds, albeit by intimidation, fear and deceit. Although we've not seen this sort of thing in America previously, it's all boilerplate stuff. Such methods as planting fake news stories and using social media to launch the crudest attacks upon their enemies are old, tried-and-true Marxist devices for tipping the scales of popular opinion in their favor, despite their utilizing relatively new technology and venues. It also should be no surprise that their tone is often profane, since this has always been the level at which many of their number operate.
And it is completely consistent that despite his flowery (if decidedly insubstantial) oratory, everything our precious First Black President Barack Hussein Obama does appears to be calculated to drive us deeper into the pit of economic ruin - because it is.
The constant PC reaction that what the dead did was to sacrifice their lives is simply disgusting.
They did (and do) no such thing!
Our military, all of them, are trained to fight and win and those men were there to do just that. They were not there to "sacrifice" their lives.
If Barack Obama, or anyone else in government, sees our military injured and dead as sacrifices, they ought to be thrown out of office immediately for basic, insulting stupidity, at the very least.
When the bodies were returned to Dover Air Force Base, Obama ordered there be no media coverage - so, no pictures for the public to see.
Well, not exactly. At least one picture was taken: Obama in profile, saluting, along with a line of other officials.
Then, it just happened to be posted on the White House website.
It should make great, re-election campaign propaganda.
But we know he cares - that's why he ordered flags to be flown at half-staff to honor the dead.
We had no business knowing they [SEAL Team 6] exist. Their glory should be in knowing that they serve silently, secretly, and lethally. They should carry out their tour of service in complete anonymity. There's a reason spies don't wear nametags -- it's because it endangers them. And the fact that we have heard a steady drone about the tragic loss of ST6 special ops in a helicopter crash, along with soldier photos, interviews with their families, etc., puts them all at risk.
The media aren't blathering on about them because they care. They're doing it for ratings. Obama used their heroism to elevate his nothingness. And Biden, in typical Biden fashion, made sure the world knew whatever he knew.
There's the rub. Much to the consternation of far-left power players, Obama moved so hard and so fast that resistance coalesced. Though the tea party was forming before he took office, it would never have marshaled the forces it did had Obama only pretended to be the centrist he was advertised as being. Many of the maneuvers this president made that outraged conservatives also terrified beltway liberals due to their scope and audacity. It was Obama's narcissism that necessitated autocratic action toward actualizing his Marxist dream. The problem was that not all liberal leaders wanted to move that far left - or at least, not that fast. Certainly not so fast as to trigger a resistance movement.
At NewsBusters, Bashing Obama Is Media Criticism Topic: NewsBusters
We're still wondering what this has to do with NewsBusters' stated mission of media criticism:
Tom Blumer writes in an Aug. 14 post of Obama's bus tour: "This habit of his of appearing in the proximity of GOP candidates and leaders is something you'd normally see from supposedly overconfident authoritarians in banana republic countries attempting to intimidate their opponents by stalking them. It is immature, betrays immense insecurity, is certainly not presidential, and gives one the distinct sense that he has nothing better to do."
Mike Bates asserts in an Aug. 17 post that President Obama is "the most inept president in history," adding: "More than one million in tax dollars for Obama to travel in luxury for a few days as he bashes Republicans. We're the ones getting taken for a ride."
If anyone at the Media Research Center is bothered by the idea that such overt partisan political activity on its websites violates the MRC's 501(c)3 status, they haven't shown it.
MRC Repeats Malicious Misquote of Sen. Lautenberg Topic: Media Research Center
An Aug. 18 MRCTV post carries the headline "Sen Lautenberg: ‘We Got to Eliminate the Rich,'" linking to a Breitbart.tv post and continuing: "Senior moment, or Freudian slip? Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) lets his class warfare rhetoric get the best of him at a press conference in Belmar, NJ."
In fact, that's not what Lautenberg said at all; he said, during a discussion of Warren Buffett's statement that taxes should be raised on the wealthy, that "we've got to eliminate the waste."
Breitbart.tv has since added a update stating, "Some of our readers with extra-keen hearing think they hear the Senator say 'We got to eliminate the WASTE.'" But Breitbart then cops out by adding, "We'll let you be the judge," even though it's quite clear to people with normal hearing that Lautenberg said "waste."
Will the MRC update or correct its post? We shall see.
CNS' Jeffrey Again Falsely Suggests Planned Parenthood's Federal Money Pays For Abortion Topic: CNSNews.com
Terry Jeffrey ramped up the shrillness level of CNSNews.com's war on Planned Parenthood in his Aug. 17 column:
By the end of September, when fiscal 2011 ends, House Speaker John Boehner must answer a simple yet profound question: Will he lead a Republican-controlled House of Representatives in enacting government funding bills for fiscal 2012 that allow tax dollars to flow to a group that kills an average of 910 unborn babies per day?
[...]
In this fiscal year, Boehner caved -- and permitted funding of Planned Parenthood.
In 2009, according to a fact sheet Planned Parenthood posted on its website, the group aborted 332,278 babies.
Had Planned Parenthood's abortionists worked seven days a week for all 12 months of the year, they would have needed to slice and suction 910 babies every day to amass that death count.
Had Planned Parenthood's abortionists worked 24 hours a day on every one of the 365 days in the year -- including Christmas, Easter and the Fourth of July -- they would have needed to terminate about 38 babies per hour to kill 332,278 in a year.
That's one dead baby every 95 seconds.
Surely, there are few institutions on earth that can match Planned Parenthood's pace in dispatching human lives. It is a true champion of death.
[...]
Every additional dollar paid to Planned Parenthood will be borrowed money that future generations will need to pay off -- the very generations Planned Parenthood is working to abort.
If Planned Parenthood continues to receive federal funding after Sept. 30, it only will be because Boehner cut another deal with Obama and a sufficient number of Republicans followed Boehner's lead in forging a coalition with House Democrats to approve the deal -- over the opposition of members who don't want tax dollars going to the nation's largest abortionist.
If Boehner takes a stand against Planned Parenthood funding, he will spark a certain-to-be-ferocious national debate in which the liberal media will use all their firepower to defend Obama and the abortionists.
Unmentioned by Jeffrey is one inconvenient fact: The federal money Planned Parenthood receives does not pay for abortions. But then, Jeffrey has committed this act of dishonesty before.
WND's Cashill Whitewashes Tim Adams And His Crappy Master's Thesis Topic: WorldNetDaily
Jack Cashill devotes his Aug. 17 WorldNetDaily column to boosting the case of a familiar WND friend, Tim Adams. It appears that Adams has written a master's thesis about his adventures as a birther, and Cashill is just the guy to whitewash things further.
As Cashill writes, Adams presents himself in his thesis as a Hunter Thompson-esque gonzo journalist who "hoped to have some fun" with the "paleo-conservative" Council of Conservative Citizens by revealing his questionable story about the purported non-existence of Barack Obama's long-form birth certificate.
Of course, as Cashill surely knows, the CofCC is not just "paleo-conservative"; it's outright white supremacist, as we've noted. And the radio host to whom Adams told his birther story does not merely have a show with an "unsavory title" ("The Political Cesspool"); he has declared that it represents "a philosophy that is pro-White."
Cashill uncritically repeated Adams' claim that in Hawaii, "he ran an office that verified voter eligibility that had a staff of about 50 people." In fact, Adams' boss has pointed out that Adams was nothing more than a low-level data entry clerk.
Cashill also rails against Keith Olbermann for calling Adams a "white supremacist" -- a logical conclusion to make about someone who made his claim at what even Cashill admits was "a meeting of a group whose own racist website denounced anyone who advocated integration." Cashill also huffed that Olbermann "concluded his slander with a smarmy zinger, 'Well done, WorldNetDaily.'" In fact, as the video shows (embedded in this WND article), Olbermann was pointing out, as we did, that WND failed to report the white supremacist ties of Adams.
Cashill then claimed that "anti-journalists like Olbermann do not report the news, let alone the truth. Rather, they attack the people who do." In fact, the exact opposite is happening here. Cashill is the anti-journalist: Olbermann reported the truth, and Cashill is attacking him for it.
We expect no better behavior for the conspiracy-obsessed Cashill. The real issue is that many of these same distortions and omissions -- and many more -- appear in Adams' thesis, which makes one wonder how it ever made it past the thesis committee at Western Kentucky University, where Adams is working toward his master's degree.
We will delve into Adam's thesis very soon. Stay tuned...
Has Newsmax Found A New Conservative to Rehabilitate? Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax has already served up image-rehabilitation services for the likes of Bernard Kerik, Ralph Reed and Vito Fossella. Now Newsmax is apparently adding a new disgraced conservative politician to the program.
An Aug. 17 column by Ronald Kessler serves up the opinions of Alphonso Jackson, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Bush, about President Obama (spoiler: Jackson doesn't like him). Kessler serves up a heartwarming story about Jackson's background:
When Jackson, 65, was growing up in Dallas, blacks had to sit at the back of the bus. They could not drink from the same water fountain as whites. They were not allowed into the same restaurants or even on the same floor of department stores as whites.
Jackson’s father was a Republican, but Jackson grew up as a Democrat. He began to have second thoughts about being a Democrat after a black athletic director at Truman State University in Missouri, who was a Democrat, told him he was not capable of majoring in political science and taking pre-law classes. Instead, he said, Jackson — an All-American athlete — should major in physical education.
Jackson told Ken Gardner, a white track coach who was a Republican, what the athletic director had said. “He looked at me and he said, ‘You don’t have to be a physical education major,’” Jackson says. “He took me in to see the athletic director, and the athletic director backed off. I had never experienced a white person who truly had faith in our abilities.”
Jackson asked his father why he was a Republican. “Because the Republicans respect me as a human being,” his father said. “They don’t categorize me as a black.”
Needless to say, Kessler didn't mention the ethics issues that forced Jackson's resignation as HUD secretary -- specifically, a federal invesigation sparked by Jackson's claim that he had canceled the contract a HUD contractor who admitted to disliking President Bush. The investigation was later closed without charges being filed.
It seems we can look forward to more whitewashing of Jackson with nary a mention of his ethical difficulties.
NewsBusters Gets Busted Making False Claim Topic: NewsBusters
Scott Whitlock asserted in an Aug. 16 NewsBusters post that ABC "hid the identity of a global warming activist" during a news segment:
The journalist featured a clip of Heidi Cullen, who ABC simply labeled as a "climatologist." She announced, "When you crank up the heat, when you globally warm the planet, you're going to see more extreme events."
Yet, Cullen is also the communications director for Climate Central, a group dedicated to "helping mainstream Americans understand how climate change connects to them, and arming our audiences with the knowledge they need to make informed decisions about their future."
But as Media Matters pointed out, the segment in question included "Climate Central" superimposed during the Cullen clip.
Whitlock has since inserted a correction into his post:
[08-17-11 Correction: ABC did have the words "Climate Central" in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. Though, the network did not offer any explanation of the group's advocacy.]
This correction did not appear on the front page of NewsBusters, which runs counter to the MRC's demands for correction placement by non-MRC media.
