Ken Blackwell Repeats NLRB Myths At CNS Topic: CNSNews.com
Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski forward a whole bunch of baseless attacks on the National Labor Relations board in a Sept. 6 CNSNews.com column.
Blackwell and Klukowski assert that the NLRB's action against Boeing is an attempt to "dictate to a private company where they can and cannot open factories or create jobs." That's false; the NLRB complaint against Boeing alleges that the company moved jobs to South Carolina in retaliation for union employees engaging in lawful strikes in its Washington base.
The authors also claim that the NLRB is "claiming jurisdiction over St. Xavier University, saying that the school doesn’t qualify for the religious exemption to NLRB’s authority because St. Xavier is not Catholic enough." In fact, as we've previously detailed, the NLRB ruled that the school could not block faculty members from forming a union because it imposed no religious restrictions on the education they provide. The school's articles of incorporation "does not contain any reference to religion, God, Catholicism, Sisters of Mercy, or CMHE; instead it speaks only to the purpose of education," that the school "does not investigate the religious beliefs of its students, faculty, or trustees," and that it "has no requirement for faculty, including adjuncts, to espouse or emphasize Catholicism in their teachings or imbue students with the tenets of the Catholic faith."
Blackwell and Klukowski went on to claim that a recent NLRB ruling "stripp[ed] workers of the right to promptly contest the results of a vote to form a union." In fact, the ruling restores longstanding procedures on contesting union elections that both employees and the employer agreed to that were themselves overturned in a 2007 NLRB ruling.
Finally, the authors claim that "President Obama’s federal card-check legislation" would "abolish the secret ballot." In fact, the Employee Free Choice Act would have stripped employers, not workers, of the right to demand a secret ballot.
Doesn't anyone at CNS fact-check their columnists? Apparently not.
MRC Complains Non-News Isn't Being Covered Topic: Media Research Center
A Sept. 6 MRC Culture & Media Institute article by Paul Wilson complains that the major news networks "won't touch" the story of "the exclusion of any religious participation from the Ground Zero memorial service during the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks." But Wilson failed to mention one pertinent fact: it's not news.
The Wall Street Journal, in the article that Wilson noted "broke the story," stated that lack of participation by clergy "has been the case during past events marking the anniversary, and that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg "has said he wants the upcoming event to strike a similar tone as previous ceremonies."
Wilson didn't note therightward leanings of the Journal, nor did he not the right-wing leanings of Fox News as he touted how fox News shows "The O'Reilly Factor, Hannity, The Five, and Fox News Watch all produced segments on the issue." Of course, if he had, that might have given away the partisan game he's playing.
Aaron Klein Anonymous Source Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Sept. 5 WorldNetDaily article by Aaron Klein credits anonymous "informed Israeli officials" with a claim that "The Obama administration is applying intense pressure on Israel to issue an apology for the 2010 raid of a Hamas-supporting flotilla attempting to enter the Gaza Strip."
As is common practice for Klein's anonymously sourced articles, there is no on-the-record confirmation of the anonymous sources' claims, or is any reason given as to why anyone should trust what Klein's "informed Israeli officials" have to say.
Further, Klein's anonymously sourced assertion appears to contradict previous statements by the Obama adsministration that the flotilla was damaging to the long-term security of Israel. But it wouldn't be the first time Klein has hidden behind anonymous sources to hurl false claims against Obama.
Obama Derangement Syndrome, Wayne Allyn Root Edition Topic: Newsmax
Socialism always sounds sexy, until your economy collapses and your government runs out of other people’s money. It’s always the same ending.
You can’t put a “community activist” who has never run a business, created a job, or made a payroll, and has only one talent — reading teleprompters — in charge of the world’s biggest economy.
This story was always going to end badly. That one was easy to predict.
AIM's Kincaid Still Trying to Smear Leon Panetta Topic: Accuracy in Media
Cliff Kincaid complains in a Sept. 5 Accuracy in Media column that a Washington Post series on "Top Secret America" is hiding "the real secrets." But in the course of his attack, Kincaid makes it clear he's keeping his own secrets.
Kincaid dredges up an attack on Leon Panetta, claiming that he was involved with the "Marxist" Institute for Policy Studies." But as Media Matters detailed, Kincaid's previous attempts to sabotage Panetta's nomination as secretary of defense by portraying him as a secret communist failed spectacularly after Kincaid and his partner, foreigner Trevor Loudon, vastly overstated the significance of constitutent correspondence between Panetta, a congressman in the 1980s, and a resident of his district.
Meanwhile, Kincaid whines about the anthrax case, whining that "Post reporter Marilyn Thompson covered and wrote a book, The Killer Strain, on the anthrax case and unfairly pointed the finger at Dr. Steven Hatfill, who was labeled a 'person of interest' but never charged and was later officially exonerated, to the point where he collected $6 million in damages from the Department of Justice and the FBI for using the media to finger him."
But as Thompson herself pointed out when her book was released: "There is such a strong circumstantial trail surrounding Steven Hatfill that the FBI would have been completely lax not to pursue it vigorously. He remains the key "person of interest" in this case because of an inconclusive polygraph and the fact that FBI bloodhounds I.D.'ed him. But the circumstantial links are compelling and need to be conclusively nailed."
Kincaid went on to declare:
The anthrax case, which was prematurely closed by the FBI when another persecuted suspect killed himself rather than fight for his reputation, was the work of al-Qaeda operatives on U.S. soil, according to the most authoritative book on the subject, Anthrax and Al Qaeda: The Infiltration of US Biodefense. This evidence suggests that the real problem facing the “National Security State” is infiltration and penetration by enemies of the U.S. and not enough safeguards against the internal subversive threat.
As we've previously noted, Kincaid has previously come to the defense of Bruce Ivins, the suspect he curiously won't name here. He has yet to address the recent evidence presented against Ivins, particularly a book strongly implicating Ivins in the anthrax attacks.
WND's Erik Rush Invents Obama Race Riot Tweets Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily columnist Erik Rush may have called President Obama a prison rapist, but he's not even saving his best Obama derangement for WND.
Here he is at something called The Daily Pledge creating fake Obama tweets:
Hey, BHO, you and I both know it…
You're the Incredible Shrinking President; shrinking, shrinking, before America's eyes.
Your arrogant minions and most of the press still carry the water for you, but that’s about it at this point. You’ve been deserted faster than a discourteous leper with body odor and halitosis.
But wait! The Incredible Shrinking President still has fingers, right? Maybe you can use them to send out some more tweets!
From @barackobama: "Obama n trubl. Take 2 streets"
Like anyone will listen, as you brandish the last weapon in your psychological warfare arsenal - The Race Riot.
Oh, yes – the prognosticators are already saying that the 2012 election cycle is going to be Race Card City, even though you already played that one. The faithful few are following your lead and trying to drum up some anger among blacks, but their rhetoric has already worn thin... Career race-baiters like Maxine Waters painting patriots as new age klansmen, hiding in the bushes with nooses at the ready. Members of the New Black Loser Party spewing ignorance and vitriolic hate…
Are you serious? The blacks and liberals you’re trying to incite to revolt are the same black folks you’ve led into 20-plus percent unemployment. A few of the really stupid ones might congregate on a few corners, but they’ll be more or less alone – except for the riot police who show up to arrest them.
America’s streets aren’t going to swell with outraged citizens, ready to do battle with nonexistent armies of Tea Party racists; they’re more likely to swell with outraged citizens as you're exposed and deposed.
Like anyone will think you aren't being treated exactly as you deserve…
From @barackobama: "America deposes 1st blk Prez! Riot in streets!"
Get real. Who in America is willing to lay down his life for you? You're just not worth it. By now, everyone knows you'd never do that for them.
Well, if there's anyone who knows firsthand about spewing ignorace and vitrolic hate, it's Erik Rush.
Newsmax Baselessly Claims Study 'Debunks Manmade Global Warming' Topic: Newsmax
An item in Newsmax's Sept. 4 "Insider Report" carries the headline, "New Evidence Debunks Manmade Global Warming." Just one problem: it doesn't.
Newsmax is referencing a study by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, that examined the effect of the sun's cosmic rays on creation of aerosol particles in the atmosphere. Newsmax uncritically repeats comments by Lawrence Solomon -- who wrote a book lauding "the world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud" -- calling the study "convincing new evidence" that "point to cosmic rays and the sun — not human activities — as the dominant controller of climate on Earth."
But as Media Matters notes, the lead author of the study says it "actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate."
Newsmax also quotes Solomon citing CERN scientist Jasper Kirkby as an early promoter of a theoretical link between cosmic rays and global warming. But Media Matters reports that Kirkby has said that the study's findings don't call into question the basic science of greenhouse gas warming, that it's "part of the jigsaw puzzle ... But it in no way disproves the other pieces."
Noel Sheppard's Double Standard on Adult-Level Commentary Topic: NewsBusters
Noel Sheppard got the vapors when Mark Shields said that Mitt Romney "has more positions than the Kama Sutra," huffing in a Sept. 3 NewsBusters post, "For those conceivably unaware, the Kama Sutra is a roughly two thousand year old Hindu guide to sexual positions. As Krauthammer scoffed, this seems hardly appropriate for a political talk show." Sheppard went on to wonder if this was "a little too off-color a comment ... or am I getting prudish in my old age?"
But Sheppard apparently has no problem with off-color language when it's directed at his political enemies. As we noted, it was just a couple weeks ago, in an Aug. 16 post, that Sheppard too delight in Rush Limbaugh's insult wondering "which NBC personality" might be found in President Obama's next colonoscopy.
And it was just two days earlier that Sheppard repeated his delight at Limbaugh's scatology, chortling that Limbaugh said that "If they ever do a colonoscopy on Obama, they're gonna find Richard Wolffe's head there." Sheppard heartily endorsed this insult: "At the moment, the winner appears to be Wolffe, but with the number of Obama-loving sycophants out there, this can change on an hourly basis."
Whose colon is Sheppard camping out in that he is allowed to risk the Media Research Center's501(c)3 statuse that he is permitted to engage in such partisan insults that clearly violate the MRC's "media criticism" mandate?
MRC: Jefferson Must Be 'Exonerat[ed]' Of Sexual Relations With Black Woman Topic: Media Research Center
Right-wingers apparently find the idea that Thomas Jefferson may have had sex with a woman of a different race that it must be fought whenever possible. We've previously detailed how Accuracy in Media called it a "smear."
Now, the Media Research Center aims to fight history, declaring that Jefferson's alleged sexual relations with black slave Sally Hemings is something he must be "exonerat[ed]" from. Matt Philbin writes ina Sept. 1 MRC Culture & Media Institute article:
Fact: The man who wrote so eloquently about basic human liberty in the Declaration of Independence was himself a slave owner. Unproven theory: That man had a sexual relationship with one of those slaves and fathered at least one of her children.
If you're a liberal journalist, the fact makes you inclined to believe the theory, and ideology and political necessity take you the rest of the way. At least, that has been the case in reporting on the Jefferson-Hemings historical controversy over the last decade and more.
It will be interesting to see if a new book that goes a long way toward exonerating Thomas Jefferson receives the same kind of breathless coverage as evidence the media cited to condemn him. Or if CBS produces a miniseries to correct the one it made exploiting that evidence.
Speaking of unproven claims, Philbin goes on to assert that when DNA testing proved a Jefferson-Hemings hookup of some kind, "Liberal journalists, then desperate for ways to defend President Bill Clinton during his own sordid sex scandal, pounced on the news that a descendent of Hemings shared some of our third president's DNA." Philbin offers only a couple anecdotal quotes, which falls far short of the vast left-wing conspiracy Philbin claims.
Philbin later goes on to reference "assumptions of Jefferson's guilt" in alleged sexual relations with Hemings, as if it was a crime akin to robbery or murder -- or a crime, period, 40 years after anti-miscegenation laws were overturned by the Supreme Court. Who knew that the MRC was still so squeamish about race-mixing?
WND's Unruh Misleads About Obama Administration, Statutes Topic: WorldNetDaily
Bob Unruh begins an Aug. 31 WorldNetDaily article on the right-wing Judicial Watch filing yet another nuisance lawsuit against the Obama administration over the Defense of Marriage Act by claiming that the administration is "picking and choosing which of the nation's laws it wants to enforce." Unruh further suggested that DOMA should be enforce because it was "congressionally approved and presidentially signed."
At no point does Unruh explain that the reason the administration has decided to decline to defend DOMA in court is because it considers the law to be unconstitutional. Unruh also does not explain that there is well-established precedent for presidents to refuse to defend statutes they view as unconstitutional -- indeed, presidents from Thomas Jefferson to George W. Bush have done it. Nor did Unruh offer any evidence that Judicial Watch is aware of this precedent.
Unruh misled further by referencing "the Obama administration's recent decision to stop the deportation of large numbers of illegal aliens, in apparent violation of the nation's own immigration laws." That's a false description of the administration's action; in fact, the administration is exercising prosecutorial discretion in prioritizing the deportation of illegal immigrants who have committed criminal offense over those who have not. Again, prosecutorial discretion is well established in U.S. law, recognized even by conservative justices such as Antonin Scalia and William Rehnquist.
As is de rigueur for Unruh, he allows only one side of the story -- that of Judicial Watch -- to explain its case and mislead about what the other side thinks. He makes no effort to contact any Obama administration official for a response to Judicial Watch.
Noel Sheppard Still Thinks Gloating Over Insults = Media Criticism Topic: NewsBusters
Noel Sheppard was so thrilled when Charles Krauthammer called President Obama "President Zero: zero economic expansion, zero jobs, zero ideas on how to cure the economy" that he devoted an entire NewsBusters post to it.
And he got such a charge out of Rich Lowry saying that Al Sharpton will "never be President of the United States because he can’t read a teleprompter" that he devoted a NewsBusters post to that, too.
What does repeating the insults of others have to do with the Media Research Center's purported mission of media criticism, and how does it not violate the MRC's 501(c)3 status? We have no idea, but Sheppard does this a lot.
McCaughey Falsely Attacks Obama Nominee Over VAT Topic: Newsmax
In her Sept. 2 Newsmax column, Betsy McCaughey writes:
On Monday, President Obama appointed Alan Krueger to head the Council of Economic Advisers. Krueger advocates imposing a value-added tax (VAT) to the nation’s tax burden. Here comes the Vanishing America Tax.
In fact, as we've detailed, Krueger does not advocate a VAT; he brought it up in a blog post "only as a suggestion for serious discussion" without offering an endorsement.
Ellis Washington Being Ellis Washington Topic: WorldNetDaily
Did white guilt + black victimhood = Obama in '08? Will white guilt + black victimhood = Obama in '12? When Rush declared on Inauguration Day 2009, regarding the presidency of Barack Obama, "I hope he fails," the liberals went wild in a fascist mob frenzy, equating Rush's statement of affirmation essentially as a racist declaration of treason. What Rush really meant (and liberals fully understood) was that he hoped that President Obama's policies (i.e., Marxism, socialism, Keynesianism, growing the welfare state exponentially, amnesty for illegal aliens, green energy, oppressive taxes and regulations, war socialism, bowing to dictators, destroying liberty, favoring Muslims, undermining Christianity and turning the Constitution into a suicide pact) would fail.
[...]
How did America get into this catastrophe called Barack Hussein Obama whose socialist policies have given us zero jobs in August? Endemic education propaganda is the short answer. My long-view theory places the blame directly on our public school establishment's unholy alliance with socialism, unionism and secularism when the NEA was established in 1857. Two years later Darwin's evolution propaganda screed was published, "The Origin of Species," which over time was comprehensively integrated into the public school curriculum, especially science, but also in colleges, universities, law schools, graduate schools, business schools and medical schools. Later, under John Dewey's influence, education was essentially manipulated to indoctrinate students to accept as ipso facto an anti-Christian, anti-American worldview rooted in Darwinian evolution and materialism, Marxist socialism, Nietzschean atheism, relativism and Freud's perverse sexual theories.
[...]
or example, when GOP candidate Gov. Rick Perry calls Social Security a "Ponzi scheme," a "monstrous lie," and a "violent" attack on core American values, the propaganda press when ballistic – but Perry was right. I just wish more Republicans would have the guts to attack the Big Lie of any liberal policies that favor stealing money from its owners and giving it to those who didn't earn it and don't constitutionally deserve it. However, today a venerated Harvard law professor like Randall Kenned can regurgitate Rush's "I hope he fails" statement and twist it to mean the opposite of what Limbaugh meant, and most people will believe Kennedy over Rush still three years later because reason, logic and deduction have been replaced with feelings, envy and race guilt.
In November 2008, when 96 percent of my people were beguiled by Obama's black skin, slick slogans and welfare rhetoric to vote for a man who utterly despises them, whose Marxist, socialist, Keynesian economic policies traps them at 51 percent unemployment in some big cities (it was 25 percent during the Great Depression) and favors Margaret Sanger's Black Holocaust policies that aborts them at greater percentages than any other racial group, it reminded me of several columns written by Dr. Thomas Sowell as well as Dr. Shelby Steele's excellent book, "White Guilt: How Whites and Blacks Together Destroyed the Promises of the Civil Rights Era" (2006). It was white guilt and black victimhood that propelled the white vote for Obama. Rush said, "We can assuage our guilt by voting for a black candidate and proudly telling everybody we did and that sends the signal, 'We're not racist,' and they get rid of their guilt." In return Obama gives America the resurrection of the fascist FDR, the welfare state and the Great Depression, Part 2.
CNS Body-Counters Tout Lack of Troop Deaths in Iraq Topic: CNSNews.com
When August became the worst month ever for U.S. military deaths in Afghanistan, you'd think CNSNews.com would have pounced on that news right away, given its history of hyping troop deaths in Afghanistan in order to attack President Obama (and, in particular, its politicizing of the deaths of 30 troops in a helicopter crash that contributed greatly to August's toll).
But, surprisingly, it hasn't yet, even though it's usually quick to crank out a body-count article in the first day or two of the new month. Instead, a Sept. 2 article by Patrick Goodenough announces that "August marked the first month since March 2003 that not one member of the U.S. military was reported to have died in Iraq or while deployed in neighboring areas in support of operations in Iraq, either in combat or non-hostile circumstances."
Of course, in contrast to its Afghan body-counting, CNS has a history of touting decreases in troop deaths in Iraq.
Ilana Mercer is not taking kindly to her white-supremacist leanings being outed.
Mercer devotes her entire Sept. 2 WorldNetDaily column to attacking me, weirdly focusing on a couple of ConWebBlog posts instead of the much more comprehensive article I wrote on Mercer's views.
One of her complaints about said blog posts: that I "omitted quotation marks" in excerpting from her column. Actually, it's clear that the indented text is the part being directly quoted, though it's partially obscured in one post by the placement of a picture of Mercer. Still, the direct quote is preceded by a paragraph ending in a colon, which is also a common indicator that I'm directly quoting someone.
Mercer then decides to defend the indefensible in portraying militant South African white supremacist Eugene Terreblanche as an "innocent":
Krepel began his litany by accusing me, on June 12, 2011, of lionizing Eugene Terre'Blanche, the murdered leader of South Africa's Afrikaner Resistance Movement. This daughter of an anti-apartheid activist (me) also stands in the dock for "pining for the days of apartheid," and helping to hide Terre'Blanche's "group's history of violence and white supremacism."
In the "War on White South Africa," I had reported on the manner in which the controversial 69-year-old Mr. Terre'Blanche was bludgeoned to a pulp with pangas and pipes by two black farmhands. The old Afrikaner had not threatened anyone
But Terry Krepel bays for the blood of Terre'Blanche, who "reaped what he sowed." Or so writes Krepel of Terre'Blanche's "violent life" and "violent death."
What, then, of the many farming families who've met a similar fate?
As my book "Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa" documents, South Africa's farmland is a vast burial ground for thousands of farmers. How does Krepel dismiss their deaths? And why does Krepel conceal that the Terre'Blanche killing bore the telltale signs of a farm murder?
Do these victims deserve the fate that befell Terre'Blanche?
(See, Ilana? The above section is indented. That means I'm directly quoting you.)
Of course, I did not celebrate Terreblanche's death; I merely pointed out that Terreblanche lived a violent life -- he once beat a man into a coma, and he led an invasion of a South African black homeland that resulted in the deaths of 37 people -- and it's unsurprising that his death was violent as well.
Mercer, while calling herself the "daughter of an anti-apartheid activist," couldn't quite serve up a blanket condemnation of South Africa's apartheid regime:
People fuss about apartheid having denied the majority its democratic rights (the vote). Denying people political privileges does not necessarily amount to depriving them of natural justice.
As explained in the book, apartheid "did more than disenfranchise the majority; it denied the majority's economic freedoms. Citizenship rights, after all, are not natural rights. It is natural rights that the law ought to always and everywhere respect and uphold.
"In its police state methods – indefinite detention without trial, declarations of a state of emergency – apartheid destroyed the individual defenses of equality before the law, the presumption of innocence, habeas corpus and various other very basic freedoms. That the apartheid regime contravened natural justice by depriving Africans of rights to property and due process is indisputable as it is despicable." (Page 231)
Disputes about democracy notwithstanding, there can be no disagreement over Krepel's crappy journalism.
(Again, indented text means direct quote.)
Any criticism she has of apartheid, however, is contradicted by her behavior, whether it be defending Terreblanche, her repeated suggestions that blacks are too stupid to run a country, and and her association with the website VDARE, which its editor describes as "white nationalist."
I've been engaging Mercer and others in the comment thread at thebottom of her article. As of this writing, she has yet to acknowledge that Terreblanche was a violent white supremacist, nor has she explained her other "white nationalist" associations.
