WND Columnists Defend Cain By Denigrating His Victims Topic: WorldNetDaily
They've finally brought forth a female face with a name and a narrative to nail Herman Cain. OK, I admit it was attorney Gloria Allred who did the dredging, but even if it's the sleaziest member of the team who scores a touchdown, it still counts for six points. I still say Solyndra was better at making solar panels than Cain's accusers are at making sex scandals. It looks very bad for Herman, even though my wife says, "There's something weird about that woman!"
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Cain's sex crimes, even as alleged, were nowhere near as egregious as Bill Clinton's. Did Clinton stop when she said "Stop!"? Did he drive her back to the hotel when she asked? That doesn't excuse Herman Cain if he's guilty. But it makes me feel less freaky standing by Herman Cain. And none of Clinton's victims needed Gloria Allred. Some sculptors work in clay. Some work in stone. Allred works in sleaze.
There are 50 states in this country. What are the odds that the first woman to come forward with tawdry details of a distasteful encounter with presidential candidate Herman Cane [sic] lives in the state that elevated Barack Obama to the U.S. Senate? I'm just asking.
There are some 1,300 municipalities in the state of Illinois, so what are the odds that Sharon Bialek lived in the same one as David Axelrod, the mastermind behind Obama's rise to power. I'm just asking.
There are 131,704,730 housing units in the United States, so what are the odds that Bialek lived in the same apartment building as Axelrod? I'm just asking.What are the odds, that a woman like Sharon Bialek, who has twice filed for bankruptcy, had a child out of wedlock, can't hold a job for very long, was fired from the National Restaurant Association, hasn't been employed for two years and lives with an unemployed boyfriend was desperate for money? I'm just asking.
Mr. Cain was known to be a fair and generous CEO. Bialek may well have asked him for help and, given her history, didn't receive any. What are the odds that she was holding a grudge? I'm just asking.
Given the number of employees Mr. Cain has had over the years, what are the odds that he would remember her? I'm just asking.
CNS Still Shilling for Oil Industry Topic: CNSNews.com
We'vedetailedhow CNSNews.com has been using its "news" section to shill for the oil and gas industry, presumably a result of the more than $400,000 the Media Research Center has received from ExxonMobil since 1998. That shilling continues in a pair of CNS articles this week.
In a Nov. 4 article on "anti-oil activists" who planned a protest of the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline, Penny Starr makes sure to point out that "TransCanada claims, however, that 'billions of gallons of oil are safely transported by pipeline' and that protecting the environment is a priority."
A Nov. 7 article by Starr details a report commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute to make the point that "Less than three percent of shares in 173 publicly-traded, U.S.-based oil and natural gas companies are owned by corporate management, contrary to the perception that a very small number of wealthy people are the major beneficiaries." That dovetails with previous work Starr has done to parrot API talking points about oil company ownership.Unlike with her Nov. 4 article, Starr made no effort to include an alternative view.
A Nov. 9 article by Susan Jones claims that "Virginia's two U.S. senators, both Democrats, and the commonwealth's Republican governor are pressing the Obama administration to reconsider its decision to omit Virginia from its 5-year offshore drilling plan."
It seems that ExxonMobil is continuing to get a decent return on its MRC money.
WND's Corsi turns Revenge Into An Article Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Nov. 8 WorldNetDaily article by Jerome Corsi is a petty act of revenge, his attempt to get back at a reporter for refusing to share information with him.
Here's Corsi's complaint against Sally Jacobs, a Boston Globe reporter who wrote a book about Barack Obama's father earlier this year:
In writing her biography of Barack Obama's father, Boston Globe reporter Sally H. Jacobs had access to what appears to be the father's unredacted Immigration and Naturalization Service file. The documents cover the time Barack Obama Sr. arrived in Honolulu in 1959 until he was forced to leave the United States in 1964.
However, the redacted file the Department of Homeland Security provided in an Freedom of Information Act request to independent reporter Heather Smathers whited-out key facts about the president's birth narrative, judging from the one unredacted page WND has obtained.
Get the inside details on what could be the most serious constitutional crisis in the nation's history in "Where's the Birth Certificate? The Case That Barack Obama is Not Eligible to be President."
Jacobs, in a telephone interview with WND, said she got a "less redacted" file than Smathers appears to have received.
Jacobs refused to share with WND the less-redacted file or to post it on the Internet as Smathers has done with her file.
"Why would I do that?" Jacobs asked.
WND suggested it would be in the public interest to have available for study the additional information her less-redacted file might contain.
Jacobs suggested WND needed to make that request in a FOIA to DHS.
"I'm sure they will give you what they gave me," she said.
WND's own FOIA request is in process.
That's right -- Corsi is bitching because Jacobs won't share something with him that he was too lazy to file an FOIA request and get his own copy of.
Corsi then bizarrely claims: "Jacob's refusal to make the file public is reminiscent of Sen. John Kerry's decision in 2005 to sign Standard Form 180, releasing his Navy Records only to the Boston Globe, known to be a newspaper favorable to Kerry, not to the U.S. public at large."
Uh, no, it doesn't. Corsi offers no evidence that the information on Obama Sr. that Jacobs obtained via FOIA was released only to her -- after all, he apparently never bothered to make the same FOIA request that Jacobs di.
Corsiis simply trying to cut corners by demanding that Jacobs give him her copy of the FOIA documents, and Jacobs merely called out his laziness. The fact that Corsi is a lousy reporter is not Jacobs' fault.
Corsi's not engaging in journalism -- he's engaging in revenge.
NEW ARTICLE: The Herman Cain Defense Center Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center goes all in to defend Cain against sexual harassment allegations. Is MRC chief Brent Bozell simply performing a favor for his "personal friend"? Read more >>
WND Jumps Into Fetid Swamp of Obama Derangement Topic: WorldNetDaily
We've detailed how WorldNetDaily's Jerome Corsi and D.J. Dolce have been taking various stabs at mucking around in one of the sleaziest corners of Obama derangement: allegations that Barack Obama was involved in gay affairs and may have killed some of the men he was purportedly involved with.
This fetid sleaze is proving too irresitible to resist -- more WNDers are embracing it.
Jack Cashill jumps in with both feet in his Nov. 9 WND column, proclaiming that Larry Sinclair -- the other central figure in this dollop of sleaze, whom WND enthusiastically promoted until it was clear he couldn't be trusted -- made his case "in exquisite and oddly believable detail" during a 2008 press conference.
It says much about Cashill that he finds Sinclair to be "believable," since nobody who actually attended that press conference came away with that conclusion. As the Huffington Post detailed, Sinclair has a long criminal record (and was arrested after the press conference on an outstanding warrant for theft and forgery charges), and the lawyer accompanying him wore a kilt and had a suspended law license.
That's the sort of thing that makes you a credible person in Cashill's world.
Cashill reached back to one of his earlier (unproven) conspiracies, that Bill Ayers ghost-wrote Obama's book "Dreams From My Father":
Although Obama spent 13 years on the mainland as a single man, on only one occasion in "Dreams" does Obama make any reference to his love life.
In a brief recounting, he tells his half-sister Auma that in addition to a white woman he had loved and lost, "There are several black ladies out there who've broken my heart just as good."
The problem is that Obama shares with the reader not a word about any of the black ladies, and not one of them has come forward on her own.
The white woman in question presents a different set of problems. In terms of height, hair color, eye color, parentage, and highly specific place of origin – namely a large country estate with a lake in the middle – she is a dead ringer for Bill Ayers's lost love, the late Weatherwoman, Diana Oughton.
One can imagine the conversations between Obama and his muse. "Hey, bro, we got 457 pages on the bachelor king of Chicago, and you don't get so much as kissed?"
"Make something up, Bill. Just be sure it's by a girl."
Um, no, we'd rather not imagine the conversations going on inside Jack Cashill's head.
Cashill isn't the only WND columnist to reference such sleaze. Erik Rush -- no stranger to Obama derangment; hebelieves that Obama's father is Malcolm X -- does so in his Nov. 9 column, in the service of defending Herman Cain against sexual harassment allegations: "Allegations of homosexual trysts and hard drug use on the part of Barack Obama – among many, many other issues – were ignored by the press during the 2008 campaign."
This, by the way, comes amidst Rush's grumbling that "the narrative of the left" about Cain is an "archetypal depiction of the 'sex-crazed black buck' on the prowl for white women" that is "right out of a Klan rally." Rush is clearly devoid of a sense of irony.
Bozell Thanks A (Very Rich) Old Friend (Who Has Given Big To The MRC) Topic: Media Research Center
Brent Bozell's Nov. 9 column is dedicated to his "old friend" T. Boone Pickens, with whom Bozell spent time in his skybox at his alma mater, Oklahoma State University, to which Pickens has given hundreds of millions of dollars. Bozell touts Pickens other acts of philanthropy as well, mainly as a way to bash critics of the rich: "Think about this charity, you Occupied Do-Nothings, the next time you bash the 1 percent that have been so instrumental in helping you in more ways than you'll ever know - or appreciate."
Bozell curiously doesn't mention, though, how much of Pickens' largesse has made its way to the organization he runs, the Media Research Center.
And he has donated a lot. Most notably, as detailed in the MRC's 2007 annual report, Pickens gave a $1.5 million challenge grant to the MRC for the creation of its Business & Media Institute. As a result of that donation, MRC vice president Dan Gainor -- last seen obsessing over the philanthropy of George Soros -- holds the title of T. Boone Pickens Fellow.
You'd think that Bozell, who loves to pass judgment on the journalistic sins of others, would want to fully disclose his financial interests in what he writes about.Then again, Bozell has been loath to disclose that he's a personal friend of Herman Cain, the man the MRC has been directed to defend to the point of sliming Cain's sexual harassment victims.
Farah Doesn't Mention WND's Business Interest in Publisher's Sale Topic: WorldNetDaily
In his Nov. 8 WorldNetDaily column, Joseph Farah laments the purchase of Christian book publisher Thomas Nelson by publishing giant HarperColllins, claiming that the result will be "more pseudo-Christian, pop theology like "The Purpose-Driven Life" and less of the prophetic, hard truth the world has been dependent upon genuine Christians to produce." Farah also self-aggrandingly touts "independent efforts like my own with WND and WND Books."
Farah failed to mention, however, his personal and business stake in this story: Thomas Nelson was WND's original partner in the WND books venture in 2002.
Farah goes on to lament that "too many Christian businessmen are more interested in making a fast buck than in spreading the good news." So what's motivating WND to do things like defend an online stalker? It certainly doesn't involved "spreading the good news"; the stalker's victim would likely beg to differ.
NewsBusters' 'Ultra' Double Standard Topic: NewsBusters
In a Nov. 6 NewsBusters post, Brad Wilmouth complained that MSNBC political analyst Richard Wolffe "labeled Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain's supporters as 'ultraconservative.'"
Wilmouth might have had a point if, 21 minutes earlier, Tim Graham hadn't written a NewsBusters post in which he described the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne as "ultraliberal."
Aaron Klein Is Still A Coward Topic: WorldNetDaily
Aaron Klein puts on a show of faux bravery in a Nov. 6 WorldNetDaily article, in which he "accused seasoned radical activists and organizations of being behind the Occupy Wall Street protests and has invited those very activists, including billionaire George Soros himself, on his program to explain their ties to the anti-capitalist movement."
This is nothing but a self-aggrandizing stunt designed to promote his new guilt-by-association book.
Of course, Klein is still afraid of me -- I remain prohibited from doing something so innocuous as following his Twitter account on the ConWebList. If Klein was really a man, he would invite me on his radio show, where we could discuss his history of lies, guilt-by-association smears, and shady anonymous sources.
But he hasn't. It must've gotten lost in the mail or something.
Noel Sheppard, Lazy and Incompetent Researcher Topic: NewsBusters
We've previously noted that NewsBusters' Noel Sheppard, as part of his barrage of sycophancy in defending Herman Cain, claimed that, according to his headline, "MSNBC Runs More Stories on Cain 'Scandal' Than it Did Obama's Ties to Ayers, Rezko and Wright Combined."
But looking more closely at Sheppard's Nov. 7 post in which he announced that claim, it looks even more fishy. He writes:
At press time, the Obama-loving outlet had aired at least 30 segments involving the now growing Cain scandal since it broke late last Sunday.
Yet according to LexisNexis, in the over 20 months between the time Obama announced his candidacy in February 2007 to Election Day 2008, MSNBC offered viewers seventeen stories concerning Ayers, nine involving Wright, and none dealing with Rezko.
At no point did Sheppard describe how he searched in Nexis for these results. A real researcher would have disclosed his search parameters.
And then there's this note at the end of his post:
Readers are advised that MSNBC doesn't transcribe all of its programs.
That's right -- Sheppard has been portraying his search results as encompassing all of MSNBC when he concedes that it covers only what's in Nexis, and he apparently doesn't even know exactly what MSNBC shows are or are not in Nexis.
Sheppard goes on to call MSNBC a "so-called news network." Does that mean we can call Sheppard a "so-called media critic"? And the Media Research Center a "so-called media watchdog group"?
Chuck Norris' Nov. 6 WorldNetDaily column largely ignores reality in trying to ramp up fearmongering about how vaccines are linked to autism.
Norris concedes that Centers for Disease Control and the Institute of Medicine, which he called "the nation's bastion of authoritative health and medicine advice," have declared that there's no link between vaccines and autism. But he responds by citing ... PRNewswire. Yes, he's citing press releases to respond to authoritative medical research.
This is just the latest anti-vaccine activism by WND, which has been of late raging against Gardasil.
UPDATE: An actual scientist examines Norris' fearmongering in detail, and finds it full of crap.
Newsmax's Root Gets Facts Wrong on Government Employees Topic: Newsmax
In his Nov. 4 Newsmax column blaming public-sector employees for "why we are suffering the Obama Great Depression," Wayne Allyn Root cites one example: "According to USA Today and the New York Post, Firemen in Las Vegas average just under $200,000 per year."
We couldn't find any instance in which either USA Today and the New York Post made that claim -- perhaps because even if they had, it would be false.
What actually happened, according to a Las Vegas TV station, is that some fire department employees in another city in Nevada -- not Las Vegas -- were making more than $200,000 a year by racking up overtime. Not an "average," not by salary alone.The fire chief in that town said it was cheaper to pay someone overtime than to hire and train additional personnel.
In fact, Las Vegas firefighters recently signed a new labor deal in which they will not receive a cost-of-living raise for the third year in a row and see their health insurance costs increase. A Las Vegas councilman said that the city "didn’t have the same problems" with overtime as other cities did.
Not having his facts straight, however, doesn't keep Root from ranting anyway:
When Obama creates new government jobs, he’s just created a massive new obligation for taxpayers. Not just an expense for this year, but an expense for 50 or more years (until the day each government employee dies). In somecases, it’s even worse. When a government employee dies, their bloated pension is paid to the surviving spouse until they die.
So Obama isn’t helping us by creating government jobs. He’s killing us. For every new government job he’s putting taxpayers on the hook for $100,000 a year for the next 20 to 30 years, plus $100,000 a year for 30 or more years after they retire, plus free healthcare for life.
Why is America broke? It’s the bloated number of government employees. It’s their wages (salaries 40 percent to 70 percent above the private sector) and their pensions that are destroying the U.S. economy and creating a lifetime of unsustainable debt for future generations.
Actually, there isn't a "bloated number of government employees." The number of executive-branch employees per capita in the U.S. population has been steadily decreasing over the last 50 years.
NewsBusters' Noel Sheppard is nothing if not a loyal, uncritical parroter of the Media Research Center's right-wing agenda. With marching orders to defend Herman Cain, the personal friend of his Media Research Center boss, Brent Bozell, Sheppard runs with it.
Sheppard dutifully repeats criticism by fellow right-winger Liz Cheney of the coverage of Cain's sexual harassment scandals, declaring her "the voice of reason" in asking why the media is covering "irrelevant issues" instead of "the economy is going off a cliff." Sheppard didn't mention thatcongressional Republicans are a major contributor to promoting issues irrelevant to the economy, such as last week's GOP-promoted resolution “reaffirming ‘In God We Trust’ as the official motto of the United States.”
Sheppard then highlighted criticism of Cain coverage by, of all people, Kathleen Willey, who according to Sheppard accused Bill Clinton of "sexually assaulting her back in 1993." Sheppard huffily writes that "everyone involved should be asking themselves why unnamed, unspecific accusers create such a media firestorm today when women that actually stepped forward with far more serious charges in the '90s were almost totally ignored by comparison." That supposed ignoring of Clinton's accusers, of course, is a lie.
Sheppard also laughably insists that conservatives really aren't playing the race card by claiming that liberals are playing the race card on Cain:
The racial element being expressed by the Right is that blacks are not allowed to be conservatives. We've seen this in the treatment of right-leaning blacks for decades.
As such, conservatives aren't playing the race card per se. Instead, they are rightly pointing out that black Republicans are treated extremely poorly by the Left and their media minions.
[...]
This issue isn't that Cain's black. It's that he's a black conservative.
Of course, "playing the race card per se" is still playing the race card. Plus, the argument that reporting the truth about Cain's sexual harassment is racially motivated was severely undercut by Cain himself, who blamed one of his fellow Republicans, Rick Perry, for leaking the story.
Missing of course -- as it is from pretty much every MRC analysis -- is any mention of how many stories Fox News has run about the Cain "scandal."
Then, in a Nov. 8 post, Sheppard launches a personal attack on one Cain accuser, Sharon Bialek:
CNN's Piers Morgan on Monday did the first interview with Herman Cain's accuser, but failed to ask Sharon Bialek - who was in the company of her liberal activist attorney Gloria Allred - any questions about her two bankruptcies, the paternity lawsuit her former husband filed against her shortly after their child was born, or exactly why she was terminated by the National Restaurant Association a month before the alleged actions by Cain took place.
[...]
So, a woman with two bankruptcies, a history of financial troubles as well as difficulty holding a job is now accusing someone of inappropriate sexual conduct fourteen years ago.
[...]
Wouldn't this have been a great opportunity to ask her about her current financial position as well as her history of not being able to hold a job and the two bankruptcies?
[...]
As you can see, Morgan chose not to ask Bialek why her previous husband filed a paternity suit against her shortly after this child was born.
Why were such topics ignored? Was it part of the terms of the interview set forth by Allred?
We don't recall Sheppard insisting that the pasts of Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey or Juanita Broaddrick be discussed upon the disclosure of their alleghations against Bill Clinton. Indeed, in the above-mentioned Kathleen Willey post, Sheppard made sure not to mention her credibility problems, which include repeatedly changing her story about what happened with Clinton to actually lying to the FBI. Even independent counsel Robert Ray didn't find Willey credible.
But that would have been too close to responsible journalism, which Sheppard doesn't do. He is, after all, a loyal lackey for Brent Bozell, and Cain is Bozell's personal friend, who must be defended no matter what.
WND Columnist: Cain Harassment Charges Are The Work of Family Planning 'Cartel' Topic: WorldNetDaily
Mark Crutcher peddles quite the conspiracy theory in his Nov. 4 WorldNetDaily column:
It is important to understand that, by this point in history, population control – especially black population control – had become a virtual religion for America's power structure. And that remains true to this day. Whether it's liberal social engineers, or wealthy elitists, or the media establishment, or the academic community, these people have created a "Population-Control / Family-Planning Cartel" that does not tolerate dissent. If you cross them, or if you appear to be a threat to their agenda, they will chop you off at the knees. It is also true that they have been especially ruthless about this when it comes to African-Americans. Early on, the leaders of the eugenics movement had figured out that it was best for them to keep their racial intentions hidden. They also understood that it would be hard to pull this off if a lot of "uppity" black opinion molders started challenging their actions and questioning their motives.
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In the last few weeks, Cain began pointing out that the Cartel is still alive and well in the form of organizations like Planned Parenthood. He also reminded the public that this particular organization was founded as an instrument of eugenics while being politically and financially backed by ultra-wealthy racists and eugenicists. He then correctly pointed out that Planned Parenthood, as well as other eugenics organizations, have disproportionately placed their facilities in minority communities with results that have been both disastrous and predictable. Finally, he called for Planned Parenthood to be stripped of its one-million-dollars-a-day in taxpayer funding. (You heard correctly ... $1,000,000 a day.)
The fascinating thing is that, within hours, anonymous people start dropping out of the trees to claim that Herman Cain sexually harassed them. As we have seen in the past, this is a very convenient charge because it is one that is virtually impossible to refute. The reality is that, in the minds of many, the accusation itself is evidence of guilt. Once the charge is made, the target has to prove a negative and, for all practical purposes, that cannot be done.
[...]
So while I have no way of drawing conclusions regarding the merit of these accusations, it is their timing that is suspicious. From the beginning, it seemed too coincidental to actually be coincidental that Cain's attack on the Population-Control / Family-Planning Cartel was immediately followed by sexual harassment charges against Cain.
A Nov. 7 Associated Press article was sent out with the headline "Obama to promote ways for veterans to find work."
Run that through CNSNews.com's bias machine, and you get the pejorative headline "Going After the Veterans' Vote? Obama Plugs Jobs for Vets."
CNS also manages to drag its biased rewriting into the MRC's disparagement of the alleged victims of Herman Cain's sexual harassment. A Nov. 7 AP article carries the headline "Allred says new woman to accuse Cain."
But CNS changed it to "Fame-Seeking Lawyer Says Another Woman Will Accuse Cain of Sexual Harassment Monday."
We're pretty sure that the MRC never described Larry Klayman or John Whitehead as "fame-seeking lawyers" for their role in legal action against the Clinton administration.
Can CNS keep rewriting AP headlines to add right-wing bias without AP taking action against it? After all, CNS is damaging the AP brand by injecting bias where it didn't exist before.
